In West Mills

by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

  “What’s wrong wit’ you?” Otis Lee said.

  “So I can’t have everything I want, but you can?”

  “The hell you talkin’ ’bout, boy?” He stepped closer to Breezy.

  And Breezy said, “Knot.”

  ELEVEN

  Among the pastimes Knot had taken up recently, there was daily apple eating while reading the newspaper. Most days she did that inside, but today she sat on the edge of her porch. There was an article on the front page about a bank that would break ground on the east side of the bridge within the next month. The write-up said that all would be welcome at the bank and that all would be treated equally. On the other side of that page was an article about the sit-ins. Knot shook her head and took a bite out of her apple.

  Carefully, not wanting to rip the paper, as she had the day before, Knot turned the page, hoping to find something that might make her laugh: a comic strip, a crime report of a foolish perpetrator, something like that. But before she was able to run her eyes across A-2, she looked up and saw Otis Lee coming her way. What he got in that potato sack today? It was probably a chicken that he’d ask her to cook and to bring him and Pep a taste of once she had. It was his way of making sure she was eating more than apples, she had decided. Or his way of making sure Knot wasn’t trading the chicken for something strong to wet her whistle, as he sometimes put it. “I ain’t doin’ no such thing, gal,” he had said when she confronted him with her theory. “You grown. I ain’t yo’ father.”

  Today, Otis Lee was approaching with a frown. It had rained almost all day, which had surely made his work difficult. And now she would have to hear all about it. Otis Lee handed her the sack and said, “A goose in there for ya.”

  Wondering why he had come to her with a goose, Knot said, “What the hell you bring me a goose for?”

  Otis Lee told Knot that he had first asked Pep if she wanted the goose. He went on and on about making sure Pep had what she needed and wanted first. To Knot, he was talking about Pep as if he had been married for only a week.

  “’Cause Pep’s my wife. The one and only,” he proclaimed.

  Knot chose not to interrupt. Years ago she had noticed that he sometimes talked in circles when he was tired or frustrated about one thing or another.

  “What’s that got to do with you bringin’ me a goose?” Knot wanted to know.

  He reminded Knot that she had mentioned months ago how much she would love to have a pot of goose and dumplings. Dinah’s goose and dumplings had been the last she’d eaten. That was the last meal she’d had with Dinah just before moving to West Mills to accept the teaching job.

  “I got up this mornin’,” Otis Lee said, “and that damn goose was in my coop, worryin’ the hell outta my cluckers. Troublesome damn thing, that goose.”

  “Oh,” Knot said. “So you decide you’d bring it here to trouble me, I guess.”

  The angry look, and the heavy sigh he gave, led Knot to say, “Sit down awhile and rest yo’self. You want a drink?”

  “You know I don’t want no drink,” Otis Lee replied. But he did accept the offer to sit. He lay the sack on the ground near Knot. “And you don’t need one, neither.”

  “Well, you can go on home if you gon’ start up with that kinda talk,” Knot said, and she took a bite out of her apple. He asked her if she had another one, and when she came back out onto the porch, she called his name and tossed an apple to him.

  “How you gon’ sell cobblers if you eatin’ all the apples?” Otis Lee asked.

  “People ain’t half buying my cobblers,” she explained. “I don’t like makin’ them no how.”

  As Knot waited for Otis Lee to tell her about whatever had caused his bad mood, she surveyed the brown sack moving next to her foot.

  “Val’s back in town,” she announced. “You seen him?”

  “What I need to see him for?” Otis Lee told her, crunching on his apple.

  “You ought to be nicer to him,” Knot said. “He yo’ cousin.”

  “Not blood, though,” Otis Lee reminded her. “That’s why he … well, you know that he is.”

  “Ain’t you ever seen a man you liked before?” Knot asked. “I see pretty womenfolk all the time. Every day I—”

  “I ain’t in the mood for jokes, Knot.”

  “I ain’t jokin’,” she said.

  “Two of the same ain’t—”

  “Lord, have mercy,” Knot interrupted. “Ain’t you got a birthday comin’?” She threw the apple core out into the yard.

  “Was yesterday,” Otis Lee said. “And you forgot. Again.”

  “Oh,” Knot said, “Well, happy birthday. I’ll make you a cobbler sometime this week. I—”

  “Pep come home from up-bridge and found Fran and Eunice fightin’ in my yard,” he blurted out. “In my front yard, Knot!” He stood up and stiffened.

  Once he’d told Knot the whole story, she didn’t know what to do first. Would she laugh at the thought of Breezy standing there, looking foolish, or should she cry because the girls were fighting over a man? She never liked to see or hear about women coming to blows over a man. Fran and Eunice had both been raised to behave better; she knew it for a fact. That had been one of Knot’s biggest concerns during both her pregnancies: making sure they would be raised by people who would bring them up to be halfway decent. And Breezy, what’s wrong wit’ him? Shit! Breezy was like a nephew to Knot, and she knew he was a good young man deep down. A little spoiled. A lot spoiled, to tell the truth. But he a good fellow.

  Pep had already told Knot some weeks ago that Fran and Eunice had been coming to her house to see Breezy. Pep had turned them away. She didn’t want to risk playing favorites, she said.

  Breezy was now working on Pennington Farm with Otis Lee. And Otis Lee had told Knot that the girls had gotten to the point of bringing Breezy lunch. Not on the same days, which Otis Lee said he’d found peculiar. “It’s like they got some kind of schedule that all three of ’em wrote up, Knot,” he said.

  The Lovings, the Waterses, and the Mannings had talked it over, and they all agreed they would have to put their feet down with Breezy and their daughters. There were too many young men and women in West Mills for them to share, Pep said.

  Knot sat quietly, using her tongue to loosen apple from her lower front teeth as she listened to Otis Lee fuss about their children. She was glad Otis Lee had something else to focus on besides how much she drank and what visitors she had.

  “Well, what y’all gon’ do?” she asked.

  “Damn if I know,” he replied.

  Knot looked at her friend. He seemed tired and worried.

  “Tell me one thing, Otis Lee,” Knot said. “Don’t Breezy got sense enough to know he can’t have ’em both?”

  By the new look he gave her, Knot wondered if, without realizing it, she’d said something nasty about his deceased mother or grandmother.

  “Course he got sense enough! How you ask me somethin’ dumb as that? You think I raised a nut?”

  Knot hadn’t had a drink in several hours—not since the gin on the rocks she had drunk with Mrs. Reynolds, the mayor’s wife, after she finished cleaning the guest rooms for a big to-do they were having. So Otis Lee had picked the wrong time to yell at her.

  “This ain’t the right time to jump hot with me, you lil high-yella sumbitch!” Knot shot back. She snatched the sack from the ground and walked toward her backyard. Halfway there, she figured it was the right time to say something she had wanted to say to Otis Lee for years. And since he was already in a testy mood, why not seize the moment? “Maybe you did raise a nut!” she shouted, walking back toward him. He hadn’t moved. “He’s damn sure one rotten mothafucker! Always has been!” And then: “This shit ain’t my fault! You hear me? It ain’t my fault!”

  “Did I say it was your fault?” Otis Lee asked.

  Why did I say that part—the part about fault?

  “You just as well had said,” Knot retorted. “I didn’t raise them girls! So don’t come over
here blamin’ me, goddamnit!”

  Otis Lee just stared at her, his eyebrows pulled together.

  Now she was ready for a drink. The one she’d had with Mrs. Reynolds had been out of boredom. The drink she needed now was out of necessity.

  She didn’t know what else to say. And she understood perfectly why Otis Lee was still sitting there looking at her as though she had spoken in a language neither of them knew. She wanted to be alone. Of that she was certain.

  Returning the sack of goose to Otis Lee was the right thing to do before saying, “Just get out my goddamn yard, Mr. Jaggers.”

  “Who?” Otis Lee asked.

  “Go to hell!” she yelled. “You, and the Waterses, and the Mannings. All y’all!”

  “You crazy, Azalea. Plum’ crazy!”

  She watched him march out of her yard.

  Knot let the screen door slam behind her when she went inside the house and to the pantry. There was no time to get a cool glass from the icebox. She needed firewater in her quickly. She drank it straight from the jar. The little bit she spilled was of no consequence. After another swallow, she sat at her kitchen table.

  That shit ain’t my fault. Ain’t my fault at all!

  Knot picked up the plate she had used that morning for the one piece of toast and the one boiled egg she had eaten before she went to Reynolds Landing. She threw the plate against the wall—the same wall Pratt had thrown her glass at almost twenty years before. Goddamn Pratt. And that goddamn boy from Delaware.

  A few days went by before she bent down to pick up the three shards of white ceramic plate.

  Two days after Knot swept up the pieces of broken plate, she felt an overwhelming craving for pecan pie, which Pep had shown her how to make. Although she had all she needed in the pantry, Knot convinced herself that she needed to go up-bridge, to the general store, for more sugar. And on her way back, she would stop to see the bootlegger.

  At the store, she bought the sugar and a few other items, just to make the trip more worthwhile. Ayra and Brock spoke to her when she went to the counter to pay. They asked her how she had been doing and how her baking business was going. The Mannings were always kind to Knot, just as they were with all their customers.

  “Thank y’all, hear?” Knot said after Ayra passed her the paper bag. “I really appreciate all y’all done and all y’all do.”

  On her way out of the store, startled by the bell they had tied to the doorknob, Knot saw Eunice coming up the walkway. Well, shit. I guess I can’t run back, can I?

  “Afternoon,” Knot said when she and Eunice passed each other. She did not expect the young lady with the V-shaped chin to respond, especially since Knot and everyone else knew Eunice could be as coarse as a hairbrush, even with her parents’ customers. So the town drunks didn’t have a chance with Miss Manning.

  Before Knot turned her eyes from Eunice, she saw Delaware Williams’s thick eyebrows. It was the eyebrows that caused Knot to drop her groceries. Sugar and cornstarch covered her shoes. And the tomatoes she had gone to so much trouble to pick out were now covered in dirt and rock pebbles.

  “Got everything, Knot?” Eunice asked.

  Her voice. Even to hear Eunice speak—she hadn’t been close enough to Eunice to hear her speak in at least three years—was like listening to opera. She’d only said three words, but to Knot they were a song. Otis Lee had said Eunice sang beautifully, like a bird, high-pitched but not squeaky. But he didn’t mentioned that Eunice spoke beautifully, too.

  “I got it,” Knot said. “Thank ya, though.”

  Eunice moved closer to Knot. She smelled like lavender, but she looked as though she had just finished cleaning out an attic. Loose ponytail. Overalls. And there was the ill-tempered expression she was known for.

  “Good people, aren’t they?” Eunice remarked. She folded her arms just as Dinah Bright would. “My mama and daddy. They good people.”

  Strange thing to say to somebody while you standin’ there, watchin’ them pick up the groceries they just dropped, and ain’t lift a finger to help.

  “Yeah,” Knot agreed, holding the bag in front of her chest like a shield. “They are. They better’n good.” Eunice drew in a deep breath, turned around, and went into the store.

  Making a pecan pie was now the furthest thing from Knot’s mind. How could she concentrate on anything after seeing a little bit of her pa and Dinah Bright and Delaware William and even a bit of herself all at once on the steps of Manning’s General Store? The little bit that was new, however, was the lovely voice. I swear that girl got a pretty voice.

  The next day Knot made two pecan pies. One of them would be a peace offering to Otis Lee, an apology for throwing him out of her yard earlier in the week. When she got close to the Lovings’ house later that afternoon, she saw Otis Lee in the coop feeding his chickens. In her mind she played eeny meeny miney mo to decide whether to go to him first or whether she would be better off going in the house to see Pep first. Miney mo told her to go to Pep first. But Knot had never been a fan of being told what to do.

  “What ya know?” she said, standing at the edge of the coop.

  When Otis Lee turned to see her, he was smiling.

  “Was your ears burnin’?” he asked.

  “Naw,” Knot said. She set the pie on the bench. “What you say ’bout me?”

  “Eunice got on the train this mornin’,” he announced. “She gon’ to New York. She tell Brock she want to go try her luck with the sangin’. Begged him to buy her a ticket and let her go.” Otis Lee was glowing almost. Relieved, it seemed. “It ain’t even been five minutes ago that I tol’ Pep I need to go tell you the news.”

  The relieved look on his face set Knot at ease, too. But while Otis Lee went on talking about his conversation with Brock, Knot slowly felt something other than relief. Something familiar had begun to butt up against the feeling of relief. Knot couldn’t say anything to Otis Lee because she was busy trying to remember where she knew that feeling from. It was sadness. Sadness with a hint of happiness mixed with it.

  “Knot,” Otis Lee said, “you hear any of what I just tol’ you?”

  “Yeah,” Knot replied. Only God and them chickens of yours heard anything you just said, Otis Lee. “I heard ya.”

  “Ev’rything’s all worked out, Knot. Eunice gon’ be just fine. Just fine.”

  And it was then, as swift as a mosquito bite, that Knot remembered the day she’d brought Eunice into the world. Recalling it as though she were watching it at a picture show. Knot saw Brock and Ayra leave her house with her second baby girl bundled in beige blankets.

  “It all sounds real nice, Otis Lee,” Knot said. “I think we oughta drink to it.”

  Otis Lee laughed and said, “You know I don’t want no drink.” He went back to feeding his chickens, smiling the whole time.

  Knot never made it inside to see Pep that afternoon. Eeny meeny miney mo told her to go home and try to drink that familiar feeling away. And she obeyed.

  TWELVE

  Early fall of ’62 brought a lot of rain to West Mills. The sky poured buckets of it on the day Pep asked Otis Lee to go across the lane to buy her a jar of Lady Waters’s town-famous cha-cha. Otis Lee, for three days in a row, heard her talk about how badly she was craving it. If Pep had been younger, he would have sworn she was expecting a child.

  “Why don’t you go on over there and get it?” Otis Lee said. “Lady’ll be happy to hear you say you longin’ for some of her food.”

  “I ain’t goin’ out in that rain,” Pep retorted.

  “You tryin’ to send me out in it,” he grumbled. Pep gave him one of those kisses that always calmed him down. “Well, if I go, I ain’t comin’ right straight back. I’m gon’ sit and talk with Phil awhile.”

  “Good,” Pep said. Breezy had gone out, and she said she wanted some time to herself anyway. “Seem like I can’t never get this place to myself on Saturdays.”

  Otis Lee was on his second helping of Lady’s chicken and dumplings an
d a second helping of Phil’s opinions on what he thought the civil rights leaders ought to do. To Otis Lee, it sounded as though he didn’t want them to do anything. In the middle of the lecture, Phil looked out the living room window and asked, “Whose fancy car is that, brother?”

  “Where ’bouts?”

  “In yo’ yard,” Phil said. Lady went to the window and looked out. “Lady, darlin’, step aside so brother can see the car.” If she heard what Phil had just said, Otis Lee wouldn’t know it. She didn’t budge.

  “Somebody’s sittin’ in it,” she reported. And once Otis Lee was ready to head out the door and into the drizzle, she said, “Here. Don’t forget Pep’s cha-cha. Tell her I want to know if it taste like I left something out. Don’t forget, hear?”

  Otis Lee took large steps, careful not to slip in the mud. Now closer to the new-looking brown Cadillac, he noticed the mushy red clay on the tires and felt sorry for the person who would have to clean it off. Then he saw the colored man sitting behind the steering wheel. The man seemed to have no interest in rolling down the window—not even a little.

  Standing next to the driver’s door wasn’t enough. So Otis Lee tapped on the window with his knuckle. With the window now rolled down a few inches, Otis Lee could see that the driver was young, twenty-two at the most.

  “Good afternoon,” Otis Lee said, noticing the sandwich on the passenger’s seat and the bottle of pop in his hand. The fellow looked at Otis Lee and continued to chew. Well, is he hard o’ hearin’ or just got bad manners? “Can I help you?” Otis Lee asked.

  “No. But thank you. I’m fine,” the fellow replied. His way of speaking was unmistakable. He was from the North. “I’m just the driver. My boss lady’s inside.”

  There were two reasons Otis Lee didn’t have to ask the fellow for his boss lady’s name. First, not a single white person in West Mills had a driver anymore. Even the wealthiest families who lived on the east side of the canal drove themselves around. They had to. The colored men who had been drivers went back to working in the mills. They made more money that way.