The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (82 page)

They go to Ferguson's Flowers, pick up their orders, and put them in the backseat of the car. Then head over to Lucy's. She's delighted they stopped by again, thrilled they're taking a kitten, and elated to hear Dwight visited Roof. Dwight would like to be kept apprised of Roof's progress. It's the word he uses though he's thinking deterioration.

“You can call me anytime. An you can call Roof! Jus phone the hospital, the third-floor nurses' station. Then ask for Lem. He's my favorite.”

“I met him.”

“Ain't he nice! First I thought it was weird, male nurse, but then I really come to like him. Anyways, jus tell him who you are, I'll put your name on the list. An he'll stand there an hold the receiver to Roof's ear.” She turns to Rett. “Now, Eliot Junior, you said you wanted that tan one?”

“Yes, please.”

“I'll fix ya up a little box with newspapers, hold on.” Lucy goes inside. Three children stare at them from the second-floor window, none of them Ashley and Woody of the day before. Lucy returns with the carton. “I didn't see the kitty you want.
Ashley!
” She gives Ashley a few moments to reply before yelling for her again.

“What!”

“Bring out that little tan tabby! I know you got her up there!”
Lucy waits, as if expecting another verbal response, but none comes. “Yaw plannin somethin special for the Fourth?”

Dwight and Rett, surprised, exchange glances. “I guess we ain't looked that far ahead.”

“We prolly goin on up to the park. Cookout, watch the farworks.” Ashley comes out with the tan kitten, and Lucy puts it into the box. “Don't let her run loose in your car,” she warns. “She'll tear it up.”

“Thank you,” Rett says to Lucy and her granddaughter.

“That was Mo, she was my favorite one,” whines Ashley.

“Oh whichever one he'da picked you'da said that.”

“I know!”
Ashley, laughing, runs back into the house.

Dwight and Rett get into the car. As Rett pulls out down the street, he slows in front of 124 Rock Hill Road, both of them gazing, silent.

The cemetery is at the edge of town, on their way out. The box is in the front at Dwight's feet, and they fold it closed, leaving a healthy breathing hole for the kitten, take the flowers out of the backseat, and walk to the Campbell family plot. They place the three arrangements on the three graves. They don't speak for many minutes.

“Where's Keith buried?”

“San Francisco.”

“Was his family from Lewis?”

“Near Lewis.”

“He didn't wanna be buried near his family?”

“He hadn't been in touch with his family since they disowned him when he was twenty. No.”

Another silence.

“You gonna be buried in San Francisco? Or here.”

Dwight considers. “Tell you the truth. I hadn't really thought about it.”

“Good.”

They fill up the gas tank, then get on the road. The plan is to drive back to D.C. now and spend the night in an airport hotel before the crack-of-dawn flight tomorrow. Fifteen miles outside of town, Dwight indicates a roadside truckstop. “Twenty years ago this place had a sign:
BLACK TO GO
. Never thought I'd set foot inside even if I could. Well. Dinnertime and ain't nothin else around.”

The music playing through the speakers is country, but they're not the only black patrons, and the waitress, surprising to Dwight, is a middle-aged black woman. She recommends the chili.

“I keep thinkin about what you said. Those refugee camps. I didn't know about nunna that.”

Rett sips his lemonade. “Don't think I exactly inherited my parents' drive. Injustice, they
did
something about it. All I ever did was talk, and when people didn't listen I hid away.”

“Think you still got a few years left in ya to figure out whatcha wanna do, Twenty-one.” Then he remembers. “Sorry, almost Twenty-
two.
July 11th right around the corner.” Rett smiles. “Thought about what you want for your big day?”

Rett mulls it over, then shakes his head. “Right this second I can't think of anything I'm in want of.”

The next song coming out of the restaurant speakers is “Sixteen Tons,” and because Dwight does take stock in a certain philosophy that not everything in the universe is so easily explained, he believes the old miners' tune is Roof sending him a So Long.

As they get back on the road, dusk descends. They don't speak, Dwight gently stroking the kitten on his lap, and driving through the Appalachians he gazes out on the valley, the stunning pink-purple sky. As a child growing up in the mountains, he'd never noticed their beauty. He had to leave and come back to see it. He thinks of the trip they
should
have made down this road all those years ago, or down the old route before the new freeway came through, the trip to the March on Washington in 1941 that little Eliot had so looked forward to and was devastated to find out would not take place, they should have come driving down here counting the cows and Eliot, tiny as he was but ingrained with such a sense of justice already, Eliot would have appreciated the March, would have remembered it but it didn't happen, it wouldn't happen until 1963, too late for Eliot and suddenly Dwight is bawling uncontrollably, huge and hysterical, the kitten jumping, staring at him, frightened, and Rett pulls over on the shoulder of the road and takes the kitten, not looking at his uncle, holding the animal on his lap as Dwight weeps and weeps and neither of them says a word. When Dwight's sobs finally subside, the exquisite afterglow has reached its peak. They both stare straight ahead, and finally Rett speaks quietly as he gently strokes his infant pet.

“You know what, Parker? Next time I come to Humble, it's gonna be October, autumn. These trees.” Then Venus appears twinkling, ushering in the night.

 

 

1960 Redux

 

1

Last Christmas, when the issue of possible war with Indochina arose at the table, Claris decided her meticulously crafted dinner was not going to be ruined by the grim discourse. So she announced she had a joke.

“The saloonkeeper's goin on vacation an he tells the man relievin him, ‘Listen. If Big John comes to town, he's the biggest, meanest thing goin. Pack up! Run for the hills!' The substitute saloonkeeper's shakin in his boots! But the week goes by an no sign a Big John, so he relaxes. Then, on the seventh day somebody runs in. ‘Big John's in town!' Well the substitute saloonkeeper
tries
to hightail it but with all the customers runnin an a-pushin he gets knocked down, an by the time he's back up ain't nobody else left an in walks this man. Seven feet tall an lookin
mean. ‘Pour me a beer!'
The saloonkeeper does, an the big man guzzles it, then slams down the mug. ‘Want another?' The saloonkeeper shakin. ‘No,' says the big man, ‘I gotta be gettin outa town!'” and Claris had nearly busted a gut laughing. Till she noticed everyone staring at her, confused. Her eyes searched the ceiling for whatever she missed.

“‘Big John's comin!'” Claris had blurted. “The big man says, ‘No, I gotta be gettin outa town. Big John's comin!'”

This memory, of his mother's perpetual inability to get a joke right, was what little Leona had triggered for Eliot a half-hour ago with her jumbled riddle as he was bidding goodbye to her grandparents Martha and Jeremiah, and why Eliot still can't stop laughing, pulling into Rosie's yard. He sees Beau at the window waving, and Eliot waves back, shifts the car to park, and steps outside. It occurs to him that he should call the colored hospital to inquire as to the condition of Mr. Yancey, the elder who had been arrested and beaten after trying to register to vote yesterday, and he is about to go into Rosie's to do so when Beau comes rushing out. “Roy's dying!”

Eliot gapes at Beau as if whatever he just heard could not possibly have been English. Then an agonizing keening from inside. Beau runs back in, Eliot on his heels.

Beau's sister Rosie sits on the living room floor holding her legless husband Roy in her arms. His eyes are wild, his body violently trembling.

“I think he had a stroke!” Rosie wails. “He was fine five minutes ago, then I went to check on my turnips boilin—”

“Where's the hospital?”

“The colored hospital's hour an a half away,” she tells Eliot, “other side a Prayer Ridge.”

Looking at Roy, Eliot fears the man doesn't have an hour and a half left in him. “Let's go.”

Beau carries Roy to the car and sits in the back with Rosie as she holds her husband. Eliot accelerates.

“Don't speed,” Beau warns.

“We gotta get him there!” Eliot is shaking.

“He's goin nowhere you give the Prayer Ridge police a good excuse to arrest that Northern nigger lawyer.”

A vague memory of Winston's ten rules for Dixie comes back to Eliot, but the thing about going as fast as your (g)as can carry you, he thinks, applied to driving at night and leaving town. Eliot still exceeds the limit, though not so appreciably as before. They pass the Nathan clinic, then further down the road the Prayer Ridge Hospital, both institutions servicing only whites, and after a drive of about forty minutes, having finally made it to the other side of Prayer Ridge, Rosie says, “He's dead.”

Eliot instinctively swerves around to look back, the car still in motion. Roy's eyes remain wide open, his body frozen. “You feel a heartbeat, Beau?” Her voice flat.

Beau feels Roy's chest, then his neck. He shakes his head.

“Then I guess he's dead.” She sighs. “My husband's dead, Eliot, we can turn on aroun.”

“Maybe—”

“He been like this ten minutes,” she tells the driver, “ain't no maybes. Turn back the other direction. The Prayer Ridge Hospital don't accept colored but the Prayer Ridge Morgue do.”

For several minutes there is silence on the slow drive back. Then suddenly Rosie is howling, causing Beau to sob holding her, their hands on Roy. Eliot wipes his eyes.

The white man at the morgue is frosty but efficient. Rosie, Beau, and Eliot leave the building, standing outside.

“I'm gonna stay with my sister a few days, help her get situated. You tell Winston?”

Eliot nods.

“You got to get on the road.”

Eliot had peeked at his watch just a minute before—11:05. To allow the hour leeway to get to his overnight in Memphis before sunset he was supposed to have left by eleven. He drives the siblings back to Rosie's. As he lets them off, it begins to drizzle. “Thank you. You were very kind to my sister and me,” and Beau surprises Eliot with a quick, awkward embrace. Rosie also hugs Eliot, though the gesture is mechanical, her mind worlds away. As he pulls off Eliot waves and they, zombies, wave back.

An hour down the road, the rain comes down in buckets. When Eliot can see nothing, he pulls off and waits. The torrent seems to have no intention of subsiding, and he is too spent to be actively impatient.

When the cloudburst finally abates to a gentle shower, it's half past noon: no leeway for making it to Memphis before dark. Eliot is tempted to try but, a bit of superstition related to the fact that the day had begun so morosely, he turns the car around. It's wasted gas, but he's in the middle of nowhere, and he certainly isn't going to knock on any of these rural Alabama doors, a black stranger with a Northern dialect looking for accommodations. He'll have to call the car owner to explain the situation, to apologize but he'll need the station wagon another night. He heads back to the Coatses', figuring on the way he'll stop in Nathan to see if he can do anything for Rosie and Beau.

Without warning the sun emerges, bright through the soft rain. Eliot sees it forming and pulls over, stepping out. A clear, crisp rainbow and above it a second taking shape, longer and more elliptical, a mother protecting her child.

**

Randall wakes every hour from a dream in which he is part of the inferno, a small figure in Henry Lee's miniature train world that Randall had set ablaze at the junkyard last night. He opens his eyes. 10:20. He doesn't ever remember sleeping this late.

His sister's right. He never wanted to be a damn salesman. He ought to celebrate getting fired, breaking ties with that blamed shoe store but my God, Benja was nearly
killed
the night before last by her good-for-nothing better half and Martin had
no
sympathy? Yesterday slowly coming back to him, his fists clenching,
Stop thinking.
He picks up yesterday's clothes from the floor, throws them on, and descends the stairs.

Pacing the kitchen, wiping her eyes.

“I couldn't sleep at all. I can't believe you could sleep after everything!”

How the hell you know I slept since you moved your ass into the guestroom? he thinks. Reaches for the coffee canister. Second thought he opens the refrigerator and pulls out a beer.
Snap
.

“It's cold.” Erma wears a shawl. “Chilly in here, drafty ole house.” She stares at him. “Well? Whatchu plannin on doin for a new job?”

“Since it barely been twenty-four hours since I lost the previous one I really ain't had time to ponder on the matter.”

“Well you
better
ponder! What we sposed to do for food?”

Randall sips his beer. She lets out a helpless cry, then picks up the medicine bottle from the middle of the table. The prescription sedatives the doctor gave her after her most recent miscarriage. She squints at the label as if it were Chinese, then twists it open, her trembling right hand pouring into her left. A pill slips through her fingers, vanishing under the stove. “
Oh!
He only gay me ten! He only gay me ten an I jus lost one. I think he's worried I might try n do somethin foolish.”

“I'll pour em.”

“You gotta mash em up. You know I cain't swallow no pills whole!”

“I'll fix em.”

“Only two at a time, he said! Only two.” Randall picks up the bottle, tapping it. “I guess I ain't never gettin to Paris France, am I!” He slowly raises his eyes to her. “You don't know what I'm talkin about.
Paris France!
That little girl's book, when B.J. was teachin me to read! In a ole house in Paris that was covered with vines
I always wanted to go to Paris France!
” Randall lowers his eyes back to his palm, tapping, the bottle stubbornly clinging to the tiny tablets. “You don't care! I ain't never had a day a happiness in this marriage, an you—” The phone. “Oh that's Mama, I called her this mornin an Daddy said she was down volunteerin for the hungry children.”
Ring
. “I didn't wanna worry Daddy but I told him to tell Mama to call me right away, soon's she got home. I needta tell her what's goin on.”
Ring
. Erma starts to exit the kitchen, then suddenly hurls behind her,
“Don't forget my milk!”
She rushes out of the room and up the stairs to the bedroom extension.

Randall opens the drawer that serves as his toolbox and pulls out a hammer. He grabs a saucer and places one of the minute yellow pills on it, then begins gently hammering it into powder.

“Mama!”
Bawling so loudly he can hear her all the way downstairs. “It's awful, it's jus awful! He lost his job!”

Randall takes a second pill, gently hammering it into the powder.

“No! The shoe store, that
nice
job. Well he started throwin shoes at his boss, actin like a
maniac!
”

Randall takes a third pill, gently hammering it into the powder.

“He was in
jail!
I had to go down an bail him out, it was so humiliatin!”

Randall takes a fourth pill, gently hammering it into the powder.

“An then we're walkin home through the streets, everyone lookin at us, I jus know they all heard!”

Randall takes a fifth pill, gently hammering it into the powder. He contemplates the size of the mound, which is starting to look suspicious.

“RANDALL! Are you ready yet? God, I jus need some
sleep,
I cain't sleep!”

“Just a minute.” Randall takes two more pills, hammering them into the powder. He pours the powder into a teacup, softly blowing to make sure no granule is wasted. He brings the cup to the faucet, a modicum of water to absorb the particles. He pours a glass of milk, then brings the cup and glass up to his wife. He's surprised to see she's still on the phone since he hadn't heard her voice in a while. Her mother must have plenty to say.

“I should get off now, Mama.” She hangs up, wipes her eyes, and takes the cup. Randall wonders if she might be at all curious as to how those two tiny little pills made the water turn so yellow, but as always she closes her eyes tight, scrunching up her face, and throws the contents down her throat, immediately followed by the milk to cut the taste. “So bitter,” she mutters, sliding herself under the blankets and wiping residual moisture from the dark circles under her eyes. Randall looks at the clock. 11:05.

He goes outside to the shed. Heavy gray, like the sky might open up any minute. Still he pulls out the mower. The old manual. Slow as it is, he prefers its tranquil quiet to the goddamn motor machine. Erma feels the modern model does a cleaner job and naturally will complain. Well. Not this time.

As Randall rolls the blades over the lawn, he deliberates on the suicide note. He imagines realistically she would use it as a final nag session regarding his general inadequacies as husband and provider. On the other hand the thousandth miscarriage would have more likely tipped her over the edge, maybe he should focus on her devastation in wanting so badly to be a mother and to have had the opportunity denied her yet again. But perhaps it would be most poignant if in her final moments she was at peace, forgiving all. He likes that. Erma the virtuous.

He finishes the job at 11:55. He'd promised himself he'd wait a full hour before he went back and checked. He smokes a cigarette and wonders if there's any bacon left. When ten minutes later a few raindrops quickly transform into a drenching thunderclapper, he calmly pushes the mower back into the shed and walks into the house, strolling up to the guestroom.

He stands staring at her, the rain beating hard against the windows. Her eyes are closed. She makes no sound, he notices no rise and fall of her chest. He sits in the chair.

I hope you're dead.

Then his lips move, mouthing it.
I hope you're dead.

Then he whispers it. “I hope you're dead.”

Then very much aloud so she would hear, if she could hear: “I hope. You're.
Dead
.”

A sudden ring and Randall leaps out of the chair. He fixes his eyes on her again, she who would come sprinting from down the street if she thought she heard their phone. Stillness. He imagines touching her, feeling her flesh cold. Hard. The phone rings ten times before stopping. He allows several moments of silence before placing his right hand on her chest. Warm, some faint beating. He's not sure what that means as he isn't certain how long these things are supposed to take. He walks to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Bacon and eggs and toast. He washes his meal down with beer, staring at the rain letting up. It's incredible to him,
miraculous
how quiet the house is. He glimpses something. Walks to the door, steps out. Double rainbow. Too bad Erma isn't here for it. These small joys of life meant a lot to her. Then the phone. After the eighth ring he sighs and goes inside.

“Hello?”

“Hel
lo!
Figured I called enough I'd catch ya, Randall. This here's Francis Veter.”