I sit on the front steps of our dorm and stare through the wire at the wide rent-dented expanse of the Mississippi River. Inside the flooded gum trees on the far side, a bolt of lightning strikes the earth and quivers like a hot wire against the sky. I think about the day I was struck by lightning and how I awoke later and discovered there was a quiver in my voice, one that made me sound like a boy who was perpetually afraid. But my voice and my deeds did not go with one another. The Japanese learned that, and so did my adversaries in New Orleans, Birmingham, Miami, Houston, and Memphis, or wherever I carried the sickness that lived inside me.
“A hurricane is blowing up on the Texas coast. It may be headed right up the pike,” the night screw says.
“Why didn’t you protect my box, boss? It’s not right what y’all did,” I say, my arms propped on my knees, my face lowered.
“Your problem is with Jody Prejean, boy. You best not be trying to leave it on other people’s doorstep,” he replies.
I raise my head and grin at him. “I’ll never learn how to pick ‘The Wild Side of Life.’ It’s not right, boss. It’s got to be in the Constitution somewhere. A man has got a right to pick his guitar and play ‘The Wild Side of Life.’“
His face clouds with his inability to understand what I’m saying, or whether I’m mocking him or myself. “Your problem is with Jody. You hearing me? Now, you watch your goddamn mouth, boy,” he says.
For sassing him I should be on my way to segregation. But I’m not. Then I realize how blind and foolish I have been.
THAT NIGHT, as the rain drums on the roof, I catch Jody in the latrine. He’s wearing flip-flops and skivvies, his skin as pale as alabaster, his dark hair freshly clipped. “The hacks are setting you up,” I say.
“Really?” he says, urinating into a toilet bowl without raising the seat, cupping his phallus with his entire palm.
“Wake up, Jody. They’ve made me the hitter.”
“This is all gonna play out only one way, Arlen. You’re gonna be my head bitch. You’re gonna collect the stroll money and keep the books and be available if and when I need you. You’re gonna by my all-purpose boy. I’ll rent you out if I have a mind, or I’ll keep you for my own. It will all depend on my mood.”
As I watch him I think of the shank I got from Weasel, the piece of glazed ceramic honed on an emery wheel, dancing with light, the tip incised with a barb that will tear out flesh and veins when the blade is pulled from the wound. I want to plunge it into Jody’s throat.
“Why you looking at me like that?” he says.
“Because you’re stupid. Because you’re a tool. Because you’re too dumb to know you’re a punch for the system.”
He shakes off his penis and pushes at the handle on the toilet with his thumb. He wipes his thumb on his skivvies. “It’s just a matter of time. Everybody gets down on his knees eventually. You didn’t go to Sunday school?”
THE RAIN QUITS AT SUNRISE, at least long enough for us to get into the fields. Perhaps fifty of us are strung out in the soybeans, then the wind drops and the sky becomes sealed with a black lid from one horizon to the next. Seagulls are tormenting the air as though they have no place to land. In the distance, a tornado falls from a cloud like a giant spring and twists its way across the land. A bunch of trucks arrive, and the gunbulls herd us to the levee and we start offloading bags of sand and dropping them along the river’s edge.
The river is swollen and yellow, and the willow trees along the banks make me think of a mermaid’s green hair undulating inside a wave.
More guys are brought up from the Block, snitches and even big stripes from lockdown and malingerers from the infirmary, even Jody Prejean and his head punk, Wiley Boone, and Hogman and Weasel—anybody who can heft sixty-pound sacks and carry them up a forty-degree incline and stack them in a wall to stop the river from breeching the levee.
I think about all the dead guys buried in the levee, and I think about the hacks who set me up to kill Jody Prejean. I think about the Japs I potted with my M-1 when I was sixteen, some of it just for kicks. I think about what I did to a dealer in the French Quarter who tried to sell me powdered milk when I was jonesing and couldn’t stop shaking long enough to heat a spoon over a candle flame. I think about what happened to a Mexican in San Antonio who tried to jackroll me for my Gibson. I remember the look in the eyes of every person I have hurt or killed and I want to scrub my soul clean of my misspent life and to rinse the blood of my victims from my dreams.
I want to pick “The Wild Side of Life” the way Jimmy Heap used to do it. I drop the sandbag I’m carrying onto the levee.
“Where you going, Arlen?” Butterbean says.
“Stay off those porkchops, ‘Bean,” I reply.
I walk down the levee into the shallows, my hands open to the sky. The wind is whipping through the willow trees, stripping leaves off the branches, scudding the river’s surface into froth along the shoals. I feel small waves slide over my pants cuffs and the tops of my work boots.
“You lost your mind, boy?” a gunbull hollers.
I wade deeper into the river, its warmth rising through my clothes, raindrops striking my scalp and shoulders as hard as marbles. The surface of the river is dancing with yellow light, strings of Japanese hyacinths clinging to my hips, clouds of dark sediment swelling up around me. Far beyond the opposite shore, the thunderheads look like an ancient mountain piled against the sky. I hear the pop of a shotgun in the wind, and a cluster of double-aught bucks flies past me and patterns on the water. The river is high on my chest now and my arms are straight out as I work my way deeper into the current, like a man balancing himself on a tightrope. A floating island of uprooted trees bounces off me, cracking something in my shoulder, turning me in a circle, so for just a moment I have to look back at the prison farm. All of the inmates are on their knees or crouched down in fear of what is happening around them. I see the night screw pull a shotgun from the hands of a gunbull on horseback and come hard down the levee, digging his boots into the sod.
Just as he fires, I smile at him and at the wide panorama of his fellow guards and their saddled horses and the convicts who seem to dot the levee like spectators at a ball game. In my mind’s eye the twelve-gauge pumpkin ball flies from the muzzle of his gun as quickly as a bird and touches my forehead and freeze-frames the levee and the people on it and the flooded willows and the river chained with rain rings and the trees of lightning bursting across the sky.
One of my sleeves catches on the island of storm trash, and as I float southward with it, my eyelids stitched to my forehead, I think I see a mountain looming massive and scorched beyond the opposite shore, one I saw many years ago through a pair of binoculars when six of my fellow countrymen labored to plant an American flag on top of it.
7 My Own Little Room in Hell
Dean James
EVERYTHING FELT HEAVIER TODAY. Her right shoulder twinged hard as she lifted the iron from the wood-burning stove to carry it to the ironing board near the window.
Wincing, she set the iron on a trivet at the broad end of the board. She unwrapped the cloth from around the handle of the iron and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The upper half of her thin cotton shift stuck to her body.
The mid-August day was hot and still. There was little relief from the open window. She could see the shimmer of the heat over the cotton fields that stretched endlessly into the distance.
Sometimes she imagined the whole world was nothing but one big cotton field. Didn’t matter which room of the house she was in, when she looked out a window, all she could see was neat rows of cotton.
With a sigh she turned away from the kitchen window to pick up the iron. Pain danced across her back as she bore down on his shirt, smoothing away wrinkles. She tried to ignore the aches. If the shirt didn’t turn out just the way he liked it, she’d have worse pain to worry about.
She wished she could do this chore in the parlor. That’s where his radio was. The time sure would pass quicker. There
was a station in Memphis that played some blues music. One over in Arkansas too.
But he didn’t like her touching the radio. He’d saved up for it, watched over it like a jealous lover. Radios had been hard to come by, til the war ended two years ago. Too bad he hadn’t been in the war. A Jap or German bullet through his head would have saved her plenty of pain.
She’d learned to be real careful with the radio. Most days he was gone from sunup to sundown, but sometimes he surprised her. He’d caught her twice listening to her blues.
He made fun of her for wanting to listen to nigger music. That’s what he called it. Accused her of being a nigger lover, wanting to spread her legs for the first black buck that looked at her sideways.
No use in letting those memories shame her. She sang a song she’d heard Johnny Blue perform one time:
“Got my own little room in Hell,
Drinkin’ the devil’s wine.
Got my own little room in Hell,
Just trying to pass the time.”
DIDN’T MATTER that her singing was all off-key. It served its purpose. Being in that room with Johnny Blue made it easier somehow.
She bore down with the iron again.
Every time she ironed, she thought about her mama.
Her mama had taught her to iron when she was nine, hardly big enough to lift that big old thing. She’d learned to do the job real good, though. She’d had to, with her mama laid up in bed with one baby after another in the six years since. There were ten of them now, three older than her, and six younger. She guessed her mama would stop having babies soon. Last she’d heard Mama was starting to go through the change.
These thoughts hurt. She hadn’t seen her mama since she’d gotten married over a year ago. She hadn’t seen her daddy either, but him she tried not to think about. She’d never be able to understand what he’d done to her.
Mama had tried to stop her daddy, but her mama was weak with Daddy. He could always get around Mama. Course, he didn’t tell Mama the real reason she was marrying Mr. Charles McAlister. That would have been too shameful.
She’d promised her daddy she wouldn’t tell Mama either. She regretted that now. Mama thought she wanted to marry Mr. Charles McAlister awful bad, even though he had to be twice her age, at least thirty. He was real handsome, and probably most girls would’ve been happy to marry such a good-looking man. He had a good job, too, overseer on one of the big Delta plantations.
If only her daddy didn’t like to drink and gamble so much. He lost a lot of money—money he should have been spending on Mama and the babies—to Mr. McAlister, and he had no way of paying the man back.
Except with her.
Mr. McAlister said she was beautiful, with her long brown hair and big green eyes. Her bosom had already developed, like her two older sisters. Mr. McAlister couldn’t take his eyes off it.
She burned with shame at the thought of her so-called wedding night. The things Mr. McAlister had forced her to do. She’d never heard tell of such, even with her two big sisters already married. They’d never said a thing to her about such disgusting practices.
Daddy hadn’t been able to look her in the face when she’d married Mr. McAlister at the justice of the peace’s office. He kissed her on the cheek once the ceremony was done, and he hurried out of there like a demon from hell was on his tail.
Sometimes she wished a demon from hell would find her daddy.
Sometimes she thought she was married to Satan himself.
After the first shock of finding out she was going to marry Mr. McAlister wore off, she thought it might be nice to be a married woman in her own house. She could have her own babies to look after.
The wedding night destroyed any dreams she had of a happy marriage.
If that hadn’t been enough, the first beating three days later did it for her.
She couldn’t remember why any more. There’d been too many other beatings since. He never left a mark on her face or her arms, only on places nobody could see.
She smiled bitterly at that. She hardly ever saw anybody besides him, unless he took her in to town to do the shopping. Most of the time he brought the groceries home.
She preferred it that way. If she dared to look at anyone in town, especially a man, he got real mad. No matter how she protested, he wouldn’t listen. He said she was just looking around for another man to spread her legs for.
The thought of that made her sick.
She set the iron back on the trivet and examined the shirt. Satisfied, she put it on a hanger and carried it from the kitchen, across the hall of the shotgun house and into the bedroom.
She hung it in the closet and walked back to the kitchen. Two shirts to go and she’d be done with the ironing.
The iron needed heating up again. She moved it back to the stove. Wanting air, she walked from the kitchen into the hallway. Both the front and back doors were propped open, and a tiny breeze wafted down the hall.
Better than nothing, she thought. She moved to the back door and gazed out. The backyard ended six feet from the steps, and the cotton fields began.
She squinted up at the sun. She reckoned it must be about three o’clock.
Soon as she finished ironing she’d have to start on his dinner. Had to be ready the minute he got home. Today was Tuesday, so he wouldn’t stay out late tonight. He’d be home around five thirty, hot, tired, and hungry. After he ate, he’d go back to the fields, make sure the men were still hard at it.
At sundown he’d be back. She always hoped he’d be in a good mood, but the men usually managed to piss him off someways. She wondered if he beat them, too.
Half an hour later, finished with the ironing, she put board and iron away. She grabbed a bucket and went out to the backyard to the pump. She used one hand and put the other under the faucet. The cold spring water felt so good.
She filled the bucket, cupped some water for her face. Let it drip down. Splashed more on her chest, soaking her shift even further.
Sometimes she thought about filling that big old bucket with water and sticking in her head until she drowned.
Or maybe filling the old tin tub they used for bathing and slipping down under the water.
But if she did that, what would he do? He’d threatened more than once to kill her mama and daddy if she didn’t do what she was told.
She didn’t think he’d really do that, kill somebody, though he’d come purt’ near to killing her one time. She’d been laid up in bed for three weeks. From time to time her insides still ached.
Back in the kitchen she dipped water into a boiler. On Tuesday nights it was always fried chicken, biscuits, rice and gravy. Mama had taught her how. He always said she cooked real good, so that was a mercy.
She pulled the rice canister off the shelf and opened it. Staring inside, she started trembling. Almost empty. No. Lord no.
Frantically, she searched the shelves, looking for more rice. How could she have forgotten?
She stumbled over to a kitchen chair and sat. The floor seemed to come up to meet her. She put her head down between her knees for some time.
Gradually her head cleared, and she sat upright. Town was too far. Even if she ran as hard as she could, she’d never get there and back in time.
Only one thing to do.
Three minutes later, hastily dressed, still barefoot, she headed out the front door.
She ran the three-quarters of a mile to where an old black woman, Miz Hattie May Carson, lived. Miz Hattie had helped her out before. She was a kind, wise old lady who made home remedies. Even Mr. McAlister would sometimes ask for Miz Hattie’s help.
Miz Hattie helped nurse her through that bad spell, when she was laid up for three weeks.
Panting, she slowed to a walk fifty feet from Miz Hattie’s old house. Stopping in the shade of an old oak, she rested and caught her breath. She liked Miz Hattie’s trees, wished they had some around their house.
She heard talking coming from inside the house. Sweating, her legs
caked with dust, she slowly mounted the steps to the front porch.
A woman’s voice floated out as she stood, hand raised to knock.
“They’s gonna be hell to pay, Miz Hattie. Them boys is so riled up, they’s gonna be something terrible happen fo’ long. You jes’ wait and see.”
“And don’ nobody know who did it?” Miz Hattie asked, her deep voice full of concern.
“No, ma’am, they sho’ nuff don’t,” the other woman said. “But they gots their suspicions.”
She knocked at the door, wondering what the women were talking about. She hated to interrupt, but time was passing quickly.
“Come on in.” Miz Hattie’s voice rang out.
“Thank you, Miz Hattie. It’s just me.” She stepped through the screen door, let it shut gently behind her.
“Chile, back in the kitchen,” Miz Hattie said. “Come on back.”
She walked down the hall and into the kitchen. Miz Hattie, her grizzled head bent over a bowl on the table, was saying, “You’d best be gettin’ on, Raylene.”
The other woman, maybe forty years younger than Miz Hattie, said, “Yes’m.” She acknowledged the newcomer’s presence with a quick nod before disappearing into the hallway. Moments later the screen door snapped shut.
“It’s nice to see you, chile,” Miz Hattie said, putting aside the bowl of green beans she’d been snapping. “How you doin’?”
“I’m okay, Miz Hattie,” she said, moving slowly forward. “I hate to bother you, but I need some rice real desperate-like.” She reached into the pocket of her worn dress and pulled out some change. “I can pay.”
“Don’t you be frettin’ so.” The wise old eyes examined her with kindness, and she blushed. “I got some rice, and you’s welcome to it. I reckon you run out unexpected like, and he wants him his rice for supper.”
Delta Blues Page 10
