by Deb Spera
“You see Alvin, you tell him he done shit in his dinner bucket for the last time. I’m done.”
He spits on the ground like he means me harm, but his words go through me.
“I’ll do that.”
Otto walks out the yard, into the swamp and across the ridge where he come from, passing his own boy’s grave with nothing but hate in his heart. I walk to the bottom of the steps and sit. Beside the pump are all the little things the girls found in the swamp since we come here: bones, fossils, glass-colored rocks. Each treasure holds a memory of the girl who found it. Among the bounty is a sand dollar. Alma dug it from the swamp; up along the edge of the yard, the edges burrowed in the clay. She come runnin’ from the vines holding it to the heavens asking what it was. It was gray from age, but whole. I told her that it came from the ocean miles away from us.
“How’d it get here, Mama?” she asked.
“Can’t say, a bird maybe? Your mamaw’s people were sea island people.”
Mama used to talk about the sea and the food that came from it. Said it was a wild and beautiful thing, but not to be trusted. It could pull a man under and drag him out to the heart of it in a matter of minutes. Daddy promised someday to take us, but he never did.
I got to walk through the swamp to see what’s become of Alvin. What I hope for and what is might be two different things. I place my hands on my knees and haul my body up. When I am inside the door I pull my dress over my head and retrieve the shotgun from the jamb of the door, stepping outside again where the sun warms my bosom. I will go naked in the heat—I’m Eve in the garden, with a gun.
Most of the ridge is still sunk below water, and a cypress has fallen across the path like a footbridge. On one side water, black as tar, is still. Only mosquitoes break the surface. On the other, where the tree has fallen, vines and moss lie so thick on the water, it looks as if you could step upon it and find solid ground. The ridge can be seen but only barely. Water from either side laps over and settles in the mud of Otto’s heavy footsteps. Light plays tricks in the swamp; bits come through the trees like sliced ribbons. The storm’s moved everything around, but I spy what’s left of the nest, half sunk in the risen water, riled from the storm. All that work the mama gator did is gone. I’m not fool enough to think she ain’t hiding. She’s here somewhere; I just can’t see where, not yet.
I hold my hand over my bad eye so the right can get clear of the blur and look over each parcel of swamp one piece at a time. What I am expecting to find, her or Alvin, I can’t say. I go slow. Halfway across, caught in the roots of a tree is a piece of red-checkered cloth. Alvin’s shirt. Big enough to see if you are heading home from the ridge, easy enough to see if you are looking. I scoot ’round to the top of the ridge and step one foot into the water. It sinks in the mud clear up to my ankle. I grab ahold of a branch above me for balance, then lean out and over the water to fetch the cloth with the barrel of my gun, but I can’t reach, so I climb up onto the tree that’s fallen. Holding one hand tight around the gun and the other to the bark, I crawl on my belly along the trunk and over the water. The wood scrapes my skin. The trunk gives way some, settling more from my weight, but stays sturdy. I reach out with the barrel of the gun, careful not to drop it in the muck, slide it up under the cloth, then give it a yank and lift. Ripples run over silvery darkness. The water breaks into tiny bubbles across the pool, like it’s teeming with fish, only it ain’t fish, it’s gators. Babies. Nigh on a hundred of them, snapping and swirling like red ants in their nest. Just beyond I spy the mama in the corner of the swamp opposite the ridge. She’s sunk low beneath the fallen nest. Her eyes are open and she’s lookin’ straight at me.
7
Retta
On Sunday I sent Odell to church alone. I couldn’t take that child sick as she was. I knew they’d send someone to speak with me before the day was done. They’ve all been talking about me taking this child. Worried for my soul, worried for what will become of me and likely worried I’ve lost my mind. Maybe they’re right. I figured they’d send somebody by now, but when Odell got home from church he came alone and all the day went by without a soul at our door. Come dinnertime, after I bathed the child for the third time in as many days, this time cutting her nails and cleaning beneath them, there was a knock at the door. Odell didn’t even look up from his chair. That’s when I knew he was responsible for whoever was standing on my porch.
When I opened the door I found Preacher there, smiling. He always knows when dinnertime is. We womenfolk laugh about it. He comes ’round each house rotating every evening ’til the month is through and starts in again ’til he’s had a visit with all his parishioners. Says he’s minding his flock, and I can see how that’s true. Everybody gets fed when Preacher’s around. He feeds our souls and we feed his belly. He’s never come to my door on a Sunday evening ’cause he knows Odell and me look forward to our time alone. I’m his Wednesday. He says I am enough to see him through ’til the end of the week. I do have my questions, and he does know his Bible, so he sees me through, as well.
Preacher’s a young man, no more than thirty, and ain’t never been married. I can’t understand it. He’s a good man, handsome, strong and able, a God-loving man. He needs a woman, but he claims the right one ain’t come along. He’s on God’s time, he says, not man’s. He come here five years ago from Chattahoochee, Georgia, and works for Mr. Coles during planting and harvest. He minds the church year-round and gets by on what he earns and what we can give.
“Preacher,” I said, when I opened the door, “it ain’t Wednesday.”
He smiled wide. “Sister, we missed you in church today. Odell said you were otherwise engaged, so I came to pray with you myself before the sun sets down.”
“Come on in, Preacher,” Odell hollered from his chair. “Retta’s fried up a mess of catfish and hush puppies that would shame your mama.”
“I can’t argue none with that.” Preacher laughed. “Everybody knows Sister Retta is the best cook in the county.”
Odell laughed, too, and I opened the screen door to let him pass.
Preacher is a friend to Odell. Mama used to tell me, keep your friends young so they won’t die off when you get old. Preacher didn’t look down on Odell for being the ragman. To the contrary, he climbed up in the wagon with him and spent whole days riding around counties meeting the folks who work and live there. Preacher said it was because of Odell that folks took to him so easy. But those two did for each other. Odell’s become the messenger for Preacher, and Preacher’s caused folks to see Odell as a man blessed with the spirit. My husband carries prayer requests from far and wide, and when it ain’t harvest or planting time he carries Preacher himself to the people who got nobody else to pray for them. Odell’s been to more funerals and weddings than anybody I know, and everybody sends him home with something they want to share. Yessir, Preacher changed Odell’s life like only a good friend can.
The child was laid up on the sofa when he come through the door. She finally took food Saturday night. The worms have attached to the excreta. That’s a good sign they are moving through her body. I spread a mixture of mashed garlic and Vaseline along her bottom to kill off any eggs. Her fever broke during Odell’s time at church. She burst forth a sweat, and when it was through, she had color in her face and could eat some corn bread and cabbage. Even ate a half a peach off the tree outside, but she’s a wisp of a thing, so I was on guard for any sign of change for the worse.
All she talked about since she got that nickel was how she couldn’t wait to show her mama. I tied it up in a handkerchief so she wouldn’t lose it, and she’s kept it in her fist ever since. I needed to focus her mind elsewhere, so I found a good stick in the yard, took some old blue yarn Odell was given and showed the child how to crochet. She took to it easy, pulling the thread through loops in an even, straight line while I cleaned catfish for dinner. She has a good head for counting and I told her so. She was on to
rows before ten minutes was done. Her crochet and that coin give her more comfort than I ever could.
“Hello, little Miss,” Preacher said to the child. She looked up from her crochet and gave him a little wave.
“Let’s go in yonder to my bed so you can get your work done,” I told her. I laid her against the pillow and put another under her back so she could sit up and work.
Preacher took up our hands after we filled our plates. We bowed our heads together and he prayed, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen and let’s eat!”
Odell smiled and we passed the food. Wasn’t ’til I served myself that Preacher said, “You’re burdened this evening, Sister.”
“My burden ain’t your worry,” I said.
“As a Christian your worry is my worry.”
“Is getting up in somebody’s business without them asking you the Christian thing to do?”
Odell sat up straight and said, “Retta.”
“No, no,” Preacher said to Odell, “that’s fine.”
He put his fork down and laid his hand upon the table before he turned to me and said, “Jesus witnessed to anyone He had the chance to because He knew His time was limited. His love was such that He was called to do so.”
“That’s right,” Odell said.
“Being a meddlesome Christian ain’t Christian, it’s hypocrisy.”
“No now, Retta, stop. That ain’t right,” Odell said.
Preacher took up my hand and I allowed him.
“Sister,” he said, “I try not to break the laws of Christianity, but I am a mortal man. I have broken the laws more than I want to confess, even when it wasn’t my intent. If I have offended, I hope you will forgive me. I am here as friend and pastor.”
I understood what I didn’t before. Preacher didn’t come to admonish, he come in support. Nobody will go against Preacher.
What could I say except, “I guess there ain’t no hypocrisy in truth.”
Odell let out a breath. There was a sudden ease in the room, like the sweetest of summer breezes, the old air washed clean.
“I’ve taken on too much worry,” I confessed.
“The Lord gives us strength.”
I looked to Odell with the pain of all the years and told him, “I don’t have it. Not for what I fear is coming.”
Preacher asked, “Ephesians 6:11 says what? It says, put on the whole, what? Huh?”
“Put on the whole armor of God,” I said.
“That’s right, so that ye may stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not with the flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the rulers of the darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
“I try,” I said.
“You do more than try. You do. And you keep on doing. That is your promise to the Lord. And what is His promise to you, Retta, huh?”
I could not speak. I was afraid if I did that the world would swallow me. I could only shake my head for fear of being eaten. Odell reached across and took my other hand, but I couldn’t open my mouth, so he said it for me. “He promises to carry our burden for us when it gets too great.”
Preacher smiled. “That’s right. Ain’t that right?”
* * *
I pack two balls of blue yarn in a small bag and give it to the child to carry for our morning walk. She says she’s making a blanket for her mama. That will be her task for the day while I get my work done. We step out to the porch and down the steps into the morning. Mrs. Walker stands in the lane like she always does, waiting for the day to come. She turns her head and sees me with the child and smiles. Mabel is on the corner, too, waiting in the dim light, for me, for a story, but I don’t look her way. She’s always got something to say even when there’s nothing worth saying.
The child wants to walk some today, and I’m in no mood for socializing, so we cut through the woods by Shake Rag so I can bypass the lane. I forgot how the energy of a child on the mend is like an animal coming out of hibernation. She moves slow but with new eyes. We walk through a patch of milkweed so thick we both get a fit of sneezes. I carry a stick to knock the spiderwebs from the path that have grown mightily overnight. The sun is peeking over the top of the land, so the stick finds what the brightening sky don’t reveal.
“We got us a jungle today,” I say.
The child looks around scared like something’s going to jump out from behind a tree. She raises her arms to be carried, and I lift her. I talk as we walk to get her mind ready for the day ahead, telling her she’s got to work hard if she plans on getting the blanket done. I remind her that tomorrow is only one more sleep at my house and then her mama will be here to fetch her so she’s got to keep her mind on her work. She gives a little jump in my arms.
“If Mr. Coles wants to show you the barn where the animals live, what you gonna say?” I ask. But she pays me no mind. There’s a nickel in her pocket and the dream of a blue blanket finished and wrapped around her mother. She’s so full of them two things she can’t hear no more. She’s lost in the promise of tomorrow, and though I should, I cannot take that from her.
Once inside my room at the Coleses’ house, our room now, I settle the child on the bed and draw the curtains. Harvest for tobacco is finished and done, but there’s still men working about the place. I got no time to worry for this child. She has to care for herself, and I tell her so.
Before I go, she says, “Miss Retta, do you think if I make my mama this blanket she’ll see how good I am?”
“Your mama knows you’re good, child. She told me that herself.”
She nods her head but don’t say nothin’ back. This time I take no chance and lock the door behind me. Mr. Coles is first to the kitchen. He pours his coffee and tells me Miss Annie wants grits. Mr. Coles hates grits. Says they’re nigger food, but Miss Annie likes the way I do them with butter and bits of bacon. I set the pot of water to boil, and he don’t say nothin’ more. I don’t know I’m holding my breath ’til he’s gone.
Nelly shows up at the back door shortly after. Nelly is an Indian girl who comes every year at harvest and helps me Monday through Friday with kitchen work. She stays with me all the way through Camp and has for the better part of eight years. I’m too old to do it all alone. When she showed up in July of this year, she was heavy with child.
“When?” I asked.
“Two months, maybe more.”
“Is this good by you?”
She smiled and covered her mouth—she don’t like that she’s missing teeth—and said, “Yes’m. It’s good by me.”
Nelly and her people are Catawba and live way back in the woods, where they keep to themselves except at harvest time when they all come out to work. Nobody knows the footpath through the trees except her people. They got a whole tribe back there and don’t like strangers coming up on them without being asked. I’ve been there many times. I delivered Nelly when she was born and all her brothers and sisters, ten in all. Nelly’s mama, Adoette, I call her Ado, has learned from me how to help with births. Now that I am old, she’s taken up delivering babies in my place. After Camp in October, I don’t see hide nor hair of Nelly for over nine months, but I never have to send for her; she always knows exactly when to come.
When she comes through the door this morning Nelly sets to work like only a twenty-two-year-old can. She’s wrung the necks of five chickens, dipped them in boiling water and has all the feathers plucked before I can say my full Christian name three times. By eleven o’clock I got three cast-iron skillets filled with fried chicken. Nelly’s shucked the corn and peeled and sliced all the cucumbers and tomatoes by the time I finish rolling out the dough and putting the cobblers together, two blackberry and two peach. We got to feed a dozen men at noon. Nelly never learned to read nor write, but she is a hard worker, and I am glad for her company. Before Camp begins, Nelly and me will have cann
ed and jarred every vegetable in the fields, made jelly and preserves from all the fruit we can find—peach, grape, blackberry, apple and fig—and put up enough walnuts and pecans to last through winter. She knows where my hands are going before I do.
Nelly is wiping up the flour from the counters, and I’m draining the chicken, when we hear a bang from my room. She looks like a ghost has crawled up behind her.
“It’s nothing,” I tell her, and slip the key from my apron pocket while she goes to set the table.
Inside the room, the slop jar is toppled. Urine and excreta have spilled along the floor and rug aside the bed. The child’s skirt is up. She yanks it down and scoots to the corner, staring at the open window. The curtains are parted. She cries out, “I’ll be good, I’ll be good.”
“Stop that cryin, ain’t nothin’ a mop and bucket can’t fix.”
She does as I say but trembles all over. I walk to the windows to close the curtains and see Mr. Coles walking away from us toward the men who are coming in from the fields. They surround the pump, taking turns washing, three at a time, and part for Mr. Coles as he approaches.
“Put on the whole of God’s armor,” is what Preacher said.
After Mr. Coles bends down to wash his face and hands with the soap I laid out this morning for just such cause, his oldest son, Eddie, hands him a towel. He stands, puts his face to the sky and wipes it dry.
So that ye may stand against the wiles of the devil...
When he finishes with the towel, he lays it around the top of the pump and steps aside, making room for the others.
For we wrestle not with the flesh and blood...
They clamor about to finish so they can get to their meal. The one I have made. These are hungry men.
...but against principalities, against the rulers of darkness in this world.
Mr. Coles looks toward the window where I stand. His eyes fix to mine, and I pull the curtains shut. On the windowsill sits a brand-new shiny nickel.
