In West Mills

by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

  After a few months of Guppy’s glares, Knot had walked up to him once, up-bridge at the general store, and said, “If you got somethin’ to say, go ’head and say it and get it over with. I probably done heard it from other folk, anyway.” And Guppy had said, “I don’t b’lee I will, Miss Centre. Don’t want to make ya late for yo’ teachin’. Wouldn’t dare keep the good teacher ’way from the good teachin’ job she come here and steal.” And Knot had said, “I’m gon’ tell you the same thing I tell everybody else who got a problem with me being up at that schoolhouse.” And after she did, she’d told him, “Now you can go to hell.” She had left the general store without the hard candy she had planned to buy for the children.

  Tonight, at Miss Goldie’s Place, Knot gave Guppy a Don’t look at me stare. She could tell by the evil look on his face that he must have already lost his week’s pay at the dice table.

  Miss Goldie looked irritable, studying Knot and Valley. Finally, she cleared her throat in a loud This is for y’all to hear way. Knot knew Miss Goldie was watching every move in the building, and she didn’t like it when her workers carried on long conversation when they should have been refilling jars and glasses and collecting nickels and dimes.

  Knot finished her first drink—it was her third, if she counted the two she’d had at home—and she danced over to that young man at the end of the bar.

  “Tell me one thing,” Knot said to him. He was standing there in a suit. Lord, the man wore the whole suit to the juke joint. Whether it was navy blue or black, Knot couldn’t be sure. “You think yo’ people know you snuck out they house yet?”

  “Well, if I had snuck out,” he replied, standing straight and putting his hands in his pockets, “they wouldn’t be able to find me. I’m a long way from home.” He didn’t sound anything like she would expect from a man of his height. He sounded as if nature had gotten tired and quit working halfway through his change of voice when he was a growing boy.

  “I figured that part out already,” Knot said. And it wasn’t just the sharp suit that had given it away. His haircut can’t be more’n a day old. And he got the nerve to have a part shaved there on the side. Menfolk in West Mills don’t wear parts in they heads. Knot said, “I hear the North on ya’ tongue. Where’s home?”

  “Wilmington,” he answered. “Wilmington, Delaware.

  “I know where Wilmington is, thank you,” Knot retorted, and she wondered how she’d had all that schooling without learning there was more than one Wilmington—one other than in North Carolina.

  She looked at him for as long as she could without feeling simpleminded. With teeth as straight and white as his, and with him not having a single razor bump on his chin, she was sure he wasn’t more than twenty years old.

  “You can’t be more than nineteen, twenty,” Knot guessed aloud. He showed her a sly smile. I’ll be damned if he ain’t got dimples to go ’long with that grin. Shit, I don’t know if I ought to slap him or kiss him.

  “People usually ask me what my name is by now,” he said.

  Knot was about to tell him that she didn’t care what people usually wanted from him, but his eyebrows caught her attention. His eyebrows were so thick and neat against his smooth, black forehead, Knot wondered, If I stick the edge of a butter knife under the corner of one of ’em, would I be able to peel it off whole?

  “Well, go ’head and tell me your name, then,” Knot said. He came closer to her, and she looked up at him.

  “It’s William. And you guessed my age pretty close. I’m almost twen—”

  “Buy me a drink, Delaware William. It’s my birthday.” Knot turned toward Valley and shouted, “Pour me what I like! This here fella’s gon’ give you the nickel.”

  “William,” Delaware William corrected.

  “Forgive me,” Knot said to him. And to Valley she said, “Delaware William’s gon’ give you the nickel.” When she looked back up at Delaware William, he was smiling again and shaking his head.

  Valley came to the end of the bar where Knot was standing. With his finger, he signaled Knot to lean in. “Ain’t you got somewhere to be in the mornin’?”

  “You ever hear tell of me not showing up?” Valley sucked his teeth. Knot said, “I didn’t think so. And I’ll thank you kindly to get me my drink. My damn birthday’ll be over, foolin’ with you.”

  Valley fanned his bar rag at Knot. “You just as crazy as you can be, Knot Centre.”

  “What was that he just called you?” Delaware William asked.

  After Knot decided she wasn’t going answer him, she looked him up and down.

  “My name’s Azalea.” And after he showed her a confused look, she said, “What’s ya business in West Mills, Delaware William?”

  “I’m just William,” he said politely. “William Pe—”

  “What’s ya business here in West Mills, is what I asked,” Knot interrupted.

  “We just stopped to rest. On our way back up from Georgia. Played some gigs down there for a few months.”

  When she asked him to explain the we, he pointed to another young man who sat at a table with the pastor’s daughter. Knot was certain the girl had snuck out of the house. Without a doubt, it wouldn’t be long before the girl would give the young man what he wanted. Knot could tell by the way she was giggling. If the girl was anything like Knot was as a teenager, Knot knew how the night would end. And that young man would be leaving town soon after.

  Knot, figuring she didn’t have more than a few hours with Delaware William, finished her drink in three swallows. Then she and Delaware William left, kissing and feeling on each other the whole walk back to her house. Between the heavy petting, she caught a few glimpses of the full moon. It was like an usher leading the way down an aisle.

  “Looks like we’re in some damn slaves’ quarters or something,” Delaware William remarked. Knot couldn’t argue with him about that, even if she were sober. She had thought the same thing when she first moved to West Mills and rented the little house from a man named Pennington. According to Otis Lee and Miss Noni, Riley Pennington—Otis Lee’s boss—was a descendant of the line of Penningtons who had once owned the whole town, which, in those days, had been called Pennington, North Carolina. It didn’t change names until a man from Maine named Leland Edgars Sr. and his two sons—Miss Noni said they were both tall and handsome with long, pitch-black ponytails—moved to town with a bunch of Northern money. They bought up a bunch of land with trees and opened a mill on the west side of the canal, causing people to refer to the whole town as West Mills. And now, aside from the one large farm, the Penningtons owned only an acre here and an acre there.

  “Used to be,” Knot said, and that was all she felt like telling him. “Now that you got ya history lesson, shut up and kiss me some more.”

  When they arrived in front of her house, that same moonlight that had led them there showed her that Pratt Shepherd was sitting on her porch. He sat there as though he had been one of the first Penningtons.

  “Young fella,” Pratt called out, “best if you turn around. Head on back up the lane so I can talk to Knot.”

  Delaware William had his arm around Knot’s shoulder, and she felt it slide away. Knot leaned into him—she might have fallen over otherwise.

  “Well, sir,” Delaware William said, “I didn’t hear her say she wants to talk to—”

  “I used to know a boy that look something like you,” Pratt cut in. He stood to his feet. “Got his face cut up for walkin’ another man’s wife home. They cut that fella’s face up real bad. Right here on this lane.”

  Knot didn’t get a chance to tell Delaware William that Pratt was no one to be afraid of; he had turned around and hightailed it back down the lane toward Miss Goldie’s Place. When Knot turned back around to face Pratt, he was sitting again.

  “I’m gon’ count to ten … or eleven,” she slurred, steadying herself in front of the porch and placing her hands on her hips. “When I get through countin’, you best be off my damn porch or I’m gon
’ have to hurt ya.”

  “What? You got a gun, or somethin’?” Pratt taunted.

  “Did you hear me say I got a gun?” Knot shot back. “I might, though.”

  “Sit down, Knot. Sit on down here ’fore you fall and crack that lil head of your’n?” He patted the porch two times.

  Knot spit on the ground and said, “My new man’ll come back and crack yo’ head open to the white meat.”

  “Who?” Pratt asked. “The one that just run off? He ain’t even stay long enough for me to tighten my fist.”

  Knot turned and looked down the lane. Delaware William may as well have been a ghost. Pratt, she discovered when she turned to him once more, looked as though he would die if he held his laugh in any longer. And once he let the laugh go—he slapped his knees, too—Knot said, “Go to hell, Pratt.”

  She sat on the porch next to him and their shoulders touched.

  “Happy Birthday, darlin’.” He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She swatted him away, but she was so glad he was there; something was stirring around inside her and she was in the mood for a man’s company.

  Pratt pulled her close to him. She liked the way her ear felt against his fleshy chest. A whiff of his clean breath relaxed her. Pratt’s breath smelled as though he had chewed on mint leaves all day instead of just after dinner, as he usually did. Knot figured she would let him kiss her, knowing he’d happily join her inside the house, where he would make her feel good under the quilt. Hell, it’s my birthday.

  In the doorway, Pratt kissed her face and neck. And before she knew it, they were on the bed they had been sharing, off and on, for two years. She didn’t know what it was, but it seemed as though his touch was different, better than before.

  “Feel like you grew some more hands,” she whispered in his ear before softly biting his earlobe. Did he put butter on his lips? She had never known his lips to feel as soft as they felt tonight. She enjoyed their new softness even more when Pratt kissed the insides of her thighs and moved up to her shiver spot.

  Pratt laid his large body on top of hers. She imagined a giant pillow. As big—with just the right amount of heavy—as he was, that night he was a nice cloud hovering over her, making love to her. Knot knew she would certainly be hoarse in the morning.

  Lord, have mercy.

  When they were done, Knot lay there wishing Pratt would fall asleep so she could have one more drink. That jar is whistlin’ for me. But after all Pratt had just done for her, she didn’t want to spoil it.

  The Dickens book was on the floor next to her headboard, so she decided to read for as long as her eyes would allow. But it sure would be nice to have a cool glass with a splash in it while I read. Damn! Pratt was wide-awake on the other side of the bed, picking with his toenails.

  The next morning when Knot woke up, she lay there thinking about how she hadn’t gotten to do what she had wanted—in my own house. She nudged Pratt until he was awake.

  “What is it?” he mumbled. He had one eye open, one eye shut.

  “Get up!” Knot exclaimed.

  “What for?”

  “Get up and get the hell on outta my house.” And after he was dressed and about to walk out, she said, “And don’t darken my doorway. Never no mo’.”

  “Azalea!”

  “Gone!” she yelled, before slamming the door and making the drink she had wanted the night before.

  TWO

  After slapping hogs’ butts all day at Pennington Farm, Otis Lee returned to Antioch Lane to attend to his own small backyard farm. He and Pep had chickens, a lot of chickens, more than anyone else on the lane. One neighbor had said, “Otis Lee Loving, I swear it’s more chickens in yo’ coop than it is people here in West Mills. Is you raisin’ them for to be ate, or for them to eat us?” Knot happened to be visiting Otis Lee at the time, and she’d snapped, “Just buy the damn eggs or shut up.” Otis Lee had secretly gotten a kick out of that.

  It was time for the chickens’ second feeding; Pep was in charge of the first. One thing Otis Lee loved to do was to feed his chickens. He called them cluckers. There was something about the way they came running when they heard him reach his hand into the pail and pull out a handful of dry corn. It made him feel needed—it was a different kind of need from Pep’s and Breezy’s. All they needed was the love he showed from just being there. Other people, and the cluckers, might not fare as well if he weren’t around, checking in, warding off danger, or steering them from it. After he threw a few handfuls of the feed onto the ground, he looked around and noticed that something wasn’t the same as it had been the afternoon before. It seemed as though the cluckers weren’t as loud, or there weren’t as many of them. Otis Lee stood looking around his feet—not counting, exactly, but studying them.

  First, he scanned the birds to see if he could find Ruby, his pet hen. He spotted her and let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.

  “Pep!” he yelled toward the house. He looked back down at the cluckers and around the coop. No reply from Pep. And again: “Penelope!” When Pep finally came to the window and raised it, he asked, “You let somebody come in the coop and steal some of my cluckers?”

  Pep sucked her teeth and went about shutting the window.

  “You hear me talkin’ to you?” he said.

  “Ain’t nobody stole nothin’, fool,” Pep replied. “I sold three this morning, and they’s one in my stove, and your mama and grandmama got two back there in the stove.” Pep pointed past the coop to the other house—a smaller one—in their yard.

  “Ain’t I told you I don’t sell chickens?” he retorted. “I sells eggs.” He wanted to throw one at her.

  Without saying a word, Pep just looked at him with the face she often made when the queue at Manning’s General Store moved too slowly. Otis Lee looked at the other house, trying to understand why in the world his mother, Rose, and his grandmother, Ma Noni, needed two cluckers. Takes Ma Noni two days to eat one drumstick. And Rose seemed to eat only enough to stay alive. She eats more of her fingernails than food, Otis Lee thought. “I get tired of y’all messin’ with my—”

  “Why won’t you hush that fuss and brang your lil self upstairs for a few minutes,” Pep said. “Need you to come see ’bout me.” She gave him half a smile and shut the window. She think I’m gon’ come runnin’. But I ain’t just yet.

  He wanted to go running to her, though. Pep was his everything. As much as he loved other people and other things, Pep came in first place. It didn’t matter to him that she hadn’t been his first lover. She hadn’t even been his best lover, but she believed she was, and he wanted her to continue believing it.

  Back in 1929, when Otis Lee and Pep went to bed together for the very first time, he had told her she was the only woman he had been with. After he had told her the lie, it had seemed as if she was trying to claim his body. She had wanted to make love every day—and many times a day. How they hadn’t had one hundred babies, Otis Lee couldn’t comprehend. But they figured God wanted them to have just one.

  Pep was the second woman Otis Lee had slept with. She was, however, the first woman he hadn’t paid to sleep with. But as far as he cared, Pep might as well have been the first and only one. She was the only woman he wanted. And now Otis Lee felt a little smile taking over his face. He was ready to go upstairs and see about his wife as she had told him to do.

  But just as he was about to go inside, Pratt came from around the house. He looked quite sad, moping, as though he had been sent to the yard to get a switch for his own spanking. By the looks of it, Pratt had gone home and put on clean clothes before he had come across the lane.

  Much to Otis Lee’s irritation, Pratt talked in circles for a few minutes; it was Pratt’s way of leading up to bad news or asking for a loan.

  “Out with it, Pratt,” Otis Lee said. “Pep’s waitin’ on me.”

  “It’s ’bout time I move on. Goin’ in the service.”

  “Goin’ in the service for what, Pratt?” Otis Lee said. �
��Did they ask you to come?”

  “Yeah,” Pratt said. “They need me, probably.”

  Otis Lee looked at his friend.

  “What in the shit you gone and done, Pratt?”

  Recruiters had already come through West Mills and selected the men they thought most fit to serve. Otis Lee and Pratt had both been passed over; Otis Lee was too short, and Pratt had quite a limp. Both men had been glad about being rejected. It was a truth they had shared only with each other.

  “How you get ’em to take you?”

  “I just tell ’em I want to be useful any way I can,” Pratt replied.

  Otis Lee thought it was an awful idea, and he said so. What sense did it make to sign up to go get hurt, or killed? Especially with Pratt having a good job and all.

  “What’s the ‘and all,’ Otis Lee?” Pratt asked. “What else I got? The mill?”

  The two of them stood quietly for a moment. Then Otis Lee decided he might as well pick up his pail and go back to feeding his cluckers.

  Pratt added, “Onliest reason I stayed this long is ’cause of Knot.”

  Pratt had come to West Mills in ’38; he had only planned to stay for one month—to take care of his sister Pleasant’s two little girls while she was in jail. Pleasant had taken her last beating from her husband, Bo Frost. One day, while he was beating her, he had made her say, “Yes, sir,” over and over. And when she said it, he had said, “I can’t hear ya.” So Pleasant had decided, she’d told Otis Lee, that she wanted to make sure he didn’t hear much else for the rest of his natural life. Pleasant had waited for her little twin girls, and Bo, to fall fast asleep. She had only meant to teach Bo a lesson, but the knife had gone so deep into Bo’s ear that he choked on his blood and died. Pleasant had run over to Otis Lee’s house and banged on the door. How Pep had slept through the loud knocking, he couldn’t understand.