by Lewis Nordan
Who could fail to listen? Not Alice. No one at all, not the wiggliest rascal-child gathered in this poor shack took an eye off of Mrs. Gregg. Some of the children reverted to thumbsucking and hair-twisting and speaking in baby-talk. One cried, one wet his pants. But not one child lost interest. They were fascinated. A low, quiet music of humming could be heard, a sentimental silence of carols and holiday tunes.
Mrs. Gregg continued her strange story. The clichés multiplied, she said. She found herself speaking a dead language, she said.
And then something else happened.
The clichés began to overlap. “Don’t cross your bridges before they hatch,” she said one day. “A bird in the hand gathers no moss.”
When this began to happen, she said, Mr. Gregg’s rage at her increased. He threatened her; he called her a bitch, a slut, a whore, a cunt.
The children’s eyes were enormous. They trembled in fear. They broke into sudden, spontaneous choruses of “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”
She became a hostage, she said. Every mixed cliché endangered her life, and yet she could not stop. “I’m smiling from end to ear.” “The worm is on the other foot.” “It’s so quiet you could hear a mouse drop.”
Mr. Gregg began now in earnest to beat her, she said. He bruised her arms, he pushed her down, he knocked out her front teeth with his fist.
It was then, she said, that she lost the power of speech altogether.
Alice said, “But you have it now! You have such beautiful speech!”
Mrs. Gregg said, “Santa Claus comes tonight.”
Alice said, “Mrs. Gregg, please!”
What happened next explained many things to Alice, though when it was over even she had a hard time believing it had really occurred. In fact, later in life, Alice often doubted her memory of even the most important details of her own existence, history, and experience, especially her heart filled with hope when she left the Normal, in love with Dr. Dust, let alone this small interim in another family’s home.
Much later, when Alice was an old woman, she thought back on this year when she lived with Uncle Runt and Aunt Fortunata, and of the dance she danced with a group of children in a snaky line through snaky lands, of her young love of her professor at the Normal, and the dream that she and Mrs. Dust might somehow, someday, trade places and then be friends, and of the rain-swept Delta, of the poor tarpaper shack and the newspaper-covered walls of her Uncle Runt and Aunt Fortunata, the speechless parrot that lived in a cage in her uncle’s house, her year as a schoolteacher, the Get Well Cards Project, the holiday music, the injured child. Even to herself, the memory was improbable.
When she told these tales as an old woman, no one believed her, not even the description of the stammering and stuttering of a pipe-cleaner woman, the impoverishment and pain of so many. “Oh, Alice, you exaggerate everything!” her friends said, these years later, her family, even the children, now all grown up, who had danced behind her in a line. “Oh, Alice, you are just the funniest thing!”
And yet Alice was sure of what Mrs. Gregg told her. She thought if Dr. Dust would just leave his wife, or at least answer his phone, then he would believe her, too. She said I love you I love you I love you into her pillow at night for many years, and into the chests of many naked men as well, and always it was only Dr. Dust.
Mrs. Gregg said, “Glenn poured gasoline, Glenn poured gasoline, right on his daddy’s bed; he was trying to burn up his daddy, when he burned up hisself instead.”
Now Alice understood. By thinking of the tune “Here Comes Santa Claus” Mrs. Gregg could speak without stammering. With that tune in her head, she could say anything. Santa Claus had broken her chains and set her free.
Alice was born again. She saw the ancient star rise over Bethlehem. She saw shepherds abiding, flocks and myrrh and miracles in the dunes. She saw what was unimaginable, classrooms in the swamp with black faces and white faces together, singing, “Jump down, turn around, pick a bale of cotton.” She saw children holding hands with grownups, black and white, singing “We Shall Overcome” in long lines and in churches. She saw a church bombed in Montgomery, dead children, marchers in Selma, freedom riders in Jackson. She saw bombs flying over the miraculous desert, Baghdad burning, Emmett Till dead, Medgar Evers dead, Martin King, the little blue figure of her own stillborn child, years hence, herself an abandoned child as well, names, faces, geographies not yet known to her, for in the extremity of her pain and need, linear time disappeared and became meaningless, blood running alongside lost hope in the streets of many nations.
Alice suddenly knew she would never see Dr. Dust again, or only once more, to prove something, to prove that love is a cruel dream, and not worth the pain and that we are, all of us, alone.
Alice said, “Oh God. Oh my God.”
IN THE next room, little Glenn Gregg was lying in an iron bed with a thin mattress. The room had been painted since the fire, but black traces of it still streaked the ceiling, and all these months later the room still smelled like a furnace.
The bed was the only piece of furniture. An electric cord with an exposed light bulb at the end of it hung from the center of the ceiling. The burned child would never recover, this much was clear immediately, and for the first time. Glenn Gregg would soon be dead if he was lucky.
Alice and the children followed Mrs. Gregg into Glenn’s bedroom. The bandages were gone. Glenn’s face and arms and bare little chest were visible above the crisp sheets. He was unrecognizable as himself, or even as a child. His scars were like taut ropes. His hair was gone, everything. His eyes were wide open because the lids had been burned away. His teeth were white and prominent as a skeleton’s, because he had no lips.
Mrs. Gregg touched a white cotton handkerchief to the mucousy hole that had been his nose. She took a bottle of eye wash from her pocket and applied a few drops to each eye.
There was nothing to say. Alice and the class stood for a while in silence.
All around the little bedroom, Scotch-taped to the walls, were the Get Well cards that the children had made. The sunny colors, bright fires, the kind sentiments, the bees that sang “buzz buzz” from the yellow petals of crayon flowers. Get Well Soon, Glenn Gregg.
After this, everyone moved out of the room, silent, shuffling. No one spoke.
Then Wanda Gregg, the fifteen-year-old sister, said to Alice, “I’m getting married.”
They were standing in the bare, poor living room now. Glenn’s breathing was ragged behind them.
What could anyone say?
Alice said, “Well, that’s fine. That’s just fine, Wanda.”
Wanda said, “He advertised for a wife in the personals in the Memphis Press-Scimitar.”
Alice said, “Is he—is he older than you?”
Wanda said, “He’s forty-something. He has a cattle ranch in Missouri. That’s what he says, anyway.”
Alice said, “These things work out, Wanda. He will love you.”
Wanda said, “I’d have to go in any case.”
Alice said, “Oh, Wanda.”
Wanda said, “Well, thank you for coming to see Glenn. It was nice meeting you.”
The Greggs stood on the porch and waved.
The schoolchildren formed their single line behind Alice. They wound through the gravel streets of Balance Due. The bottle trees, the woodsmoke, the boy with a pistol and an apple and the crying girl, the Nazi voodoo woman, Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro., and all the rest.
They did not speak. They did not dance. They made their way back towards Arrow Catcher Elementary School, where they would move through the hours together in safety, in silence, before it was time to go back to their homes.
It was still early in the day, not quite noon. The rain had started now. Alice thought of Wanda Gregg and the rancher in Missouri who was waiting for her, forty-something. She saw pastures filled with horses, salt licks on fence posts, troughs of water, mangers of dusty oats. A child tied to a dying farmer.
D
r. Dust was more like fifty-something, and he wasn’t really waiting, he had a wife, and no ranch. He wasn’t even answering his telephone.
And did it really matter that Santa Claus had restored a mute woman’s voice, and her hope in this world?
Alice had to get out of Balance Due while it was still safe to move along the roads with these children. They walked quickly, one step at a time, without looking from side to side. Violent men were awake now, cursing whores in the rain-drenched street.
2
THE DAY Glenn Gregg’s daddy got back from New Orleans was the same day Lady Sally Anne Montberclair decided to park her big white Cadillac out in front of Red’s Good-lookin Bar and Gro. and leave the motor running and scoot inside, out of the first drops of rain, on an errand. Glenn’s daddy was named Solon.
Solon was a skinny man, with thin, greasy hair. He had been sleeping in his clothes for six months to protect himself from creatures in his mattress, gabardine pants that were baggy in the butt and a western-style shirt and a bolo tie, brogans on his feet. Solon considered himself a ladies’ man.
It was early September, still hot as blue blazes in Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. Now this rain! The Delta was steaming. The colored school hadn’t even started up yet—the white school started the week before—and so there were kids standing around up on the big front porch of Red’s store, colored children, teasing and messing, all time messing, their parents would say, flirting with each other and playing grab-ass, when Lady Montberclair showed up.
Bobo, he was the center of attention, always was, fourteen years old, fote-teen he pronounced it, always into something, always had him a joke going, a dare, something another, some kind of mess, all time messing. Wore him a white shirt, too, like a natural man, Bobo did, not no feed-sack shirt neither, uh-uh, Bobo had him a tie knotted up at the collar, tied it his ownself, four-in-hand, something another, and a wide-brimmed felt hat pushed back on his head, and a big-ass gold ring look like a walnut on his finger, “Italian gold,” Bobo said, out on the porch of the store, “Eye-talian” he pronounced it. Bobo was a spote, sho now, what you say.
Bobo, he’s saying, “Who want to look at my lizard,” that’s what he’s saying, be making little girls out on the porch squeal, sho was, and little boys be saying, “All time talking about lizard, uh, uh, uh,” and all he’s doing is be showing off a picture of his Chicago girlfriend, which he carried in his wallet, a white girl, lizard-skin wallet, bought it down to Mr. Shanker’s Drug Store, right in Arrow Catcher, but how do they find a lizard big enough to put your money and your pitchers in, is what Bobo wished he knowed. Actually it wont no picture of his girlfriend, it was a picture of a movie star, Hedy Somebody-another, Bobo don’t care, Bobo he’d say most anything, make somebody squeal.
He had a couple of the kids fooled about the movie star, too, the one he said was his girlfriend. Bobo said, “That’s some good white stuff.” The little girls squealed and covered their faces, and the boys burned with envy, even those who didn’t believe him for one minute, they said, “All time talking about tail.”
A couple of guitar players were there, too, black men, out on the porch this morning, sitting in cane-bottom chairs with their big boxes, blues singers, singing Robert Johnson tunes, just to wake themselves up a little bit. Robert Johnson was the King of the Blues, that’s what people said. Robert Johnson grew up right down the road from Arrow Catcher, down in Morgan City, got hisself killed, long time ago, by a jealous husband. Don’t that seem like just the way the King of the Blues ought to check out of this life? Blues singers like those on the porch revered Robert Johnson, they liked to start their day playing Robert Johnson tunes.
One of the singers sang about waking up in the morning and seeing the blues walking like a man. He sang, “Come on, blues, take my hand.” This was Blue John Jackson singing, he was a big man. The other man, he didn’t sing, the albino. He had pale, pale skin and white nappy hair and split lips. He didn’t hardly talk. He wore him some dark shades, day and night, because his eyes was pink. He was just called The Rider. Sometimes he put down his box and blowed on his harpoon, he had about four harps, all different keys.
Everybody was scared of The Rider. Wouldn’t nobody talk to him. Everybody said The Rider had pink eyes like a grave rat. Everybody said The Rider had done been brung back from the dead by a hoodoo woman name of Lily.
Bobo looked at The Rider. Bobo said, “Uh-huh.” Bobo had this little smirk. He pushed his hat more back on his head. The Rider was playing “The Preaching Blues” on his guitar. Bobo walked right up to him. Bobo said, “Hey, Rider, you’s a mysterious motherfucker, ain’t you.” The little girls squealed. The little boys said, “You crazy, man, you crazy, you all time talking about mysterious.”
Anyway, here come Lady Montberclair, just when Solon Gregg come blowing back into town from New Orleans wearing gabardine pants and plenty of Wildroot Cream Oil. All Lady Montberclair was wearing this early in the morning was a canvas trench coat and a pair of bedroom slippers. Leastways, that’s the way it looked to Solon Gregg, who was interested in this sort of thing, like the ladies’ man that he was. Lady Montberclair was bare-legged and rumored to be modern.
Well, when did you wake up, girl, goddamn! Look at you, coming straggling out of bed, ain’t done scratching yourself and looking like the unmade bed you just straggled up out of! Law-zee, Lady Montberclair! White lady’s hair looked like it hadn’t never been combed, long and blond and falling down across her shoulders like some kind of movie star. She wont wearing no makeup, eyes looking like a raccoon, make you want to kiss her right on the durn mouth.
Solon ran a steel comb through his hair, which had just grown in after the house fire six months ago. Solon hadn’t set foot in Arrow Catcher since the fire, hadn’t seen his wife or children since then, neither. Armed robbery was Solon’s trade, though he was not adverse to other honest work either, you know, extortion, for example.
Well, Sally Anne Montberclair she was a good-looking woman, there wont no doubt on this green earth about that, now was they, she did have a nice turn of ankle, sho did. That’s what Solon Gregg was thinking just at the same time he was taking a little taste with the boys for old time sake.
Runt Conroy, he was standing in Red’s place, too, like usual. Runt looked like a weasel, with real beady eyes, and wore a felt hat with a grease stain on the crown. He looked especially bad lately, since his wife had done left him, Fortunata, and run off to Kosiesko. Runt’s niece Alice had come to look after the children, so that was good, didn’t interfere too heavy with his drinking. Runt had Fortunata’s phone number in Kosiesko, down on the coast, funny-looking durn number, too, if you asked Runt, just in case of an emergency, but he was scared to call her up, she might hang up on him, and besides that he didn’t know who might answer the phone, and, anyway, what bigger emergency could there be than your wife running off and leaving you, and Fortunata already knew about that, didn’t need to be told.
Runt wore the hat pulled down over his eyes like Humphrey Bogart. Runt figured he might be a happier man if he had him a good strong name like Humphrey instead of Runt. Cyrus was Runt’s real name, but nobody never called him that, never had. He was the smallest of the children in his family, when he was a boy, and his daddy always called him “the runt of the litter.” It stuck, wouldn’t you just know it.
Runt slipped his half pint of Early Times into his jacket pocket, out of sight. He turned away from the vision of Lady Montberclair in her man’s trench coat, in gratitude for many things, and focused his attention on other things, things that didn’t scare him quite so much as them raccoon eyes and blond hair, the Royal Crown box, the half-empty shelves in Red’s store, a bin full of black bananas and half-rotted peaches, a scrawny chicken in the meat case. That chicken looked like the victim of a lynching.
Another patron of Red’s, the housepainter Gilbert Mecklin, was on hand, with his blind daddy, Pap. Gilbert always wore white painter overalls and a paper cap with Curry Lumber Yard printed
on it, and he smelled like paint and turpentine and Aqua Velva shaving lotion, in addition to the whiskey.
Gilbert opened up the meat cooler and took a big knife off the butcher block and sawed off a hunk of rancid cheddar from the wheel. Then he took his old blind daddy, who always wore aviator sunglasses with green-tinted lenses, out in back of the store to look at a hellhound Red had lassoed down at the town dump when it was half-grown and brought home for a pet.
Pap said, “Can you pet it?” Talking about the hellhound. He held onto Gilbert’s arm like a child.
Gilbert said, “Feed him that hunk of cheese first, see don’t he warm up to you a little.”
Out on the porch the colored children were messing. They were giggling. They were talking trash. They were saying, “I dare you, I dee-double-dog dare you.”
The blues singers were singing a song about the devil knocking on their door. Blue John Jackson sang about greeting old Satan like a natural man. He sang, “Come on, Satan, take my hand.”
Solon Gregg still had his eye on Lady Montberclair, him being a ladies’ man. He raked his steel comb through his hair, and felt the teeth of the comb on the raised scars left in his scalp by the fire. His head was still tender.
Solon was about to say something to Lady Montberclair, he was about to call her by her given name, Sally Anne, see could he make her squirm, when two things happened that shut him up, good and proper.
The first thing was, Lady Montberclair spoke first, before he could open his mouth. She was talking to Red about a purchase. Red owned Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro. He stood behind the counter. Red was old and freckle-faced and his hair, which stood straight up on end, was mostly white now.
Lady Montberclair said, “Red, I know I’m intruding here, and I’m sorry, honest I am, but it’s an emergency. Do you carry tampons?”
The truth was out about Sally Anne Montberclair: she was modern.
The rain that had threatened to fall all morning began to fall in earnest now, plink-plink-plink, on the porch roof and on the tin hellhound shed out back.
