The Last Blue

by Isla Morley

  He uses the porch rail to hoist himself up the steps, sweating and grunting from exertion. Meanness has stacked up unevenly on his face. The thick fleshy ridge that forms his brow casts a shadow over his eyes, which are already dark and hard as knots on a tree. One eye is always unnaturally wide as if it does all its looking through peepholes, the other squinting any time anyone says something kind. His cheeks hang low and are flamed now as though at some insult. Uncle Eddie doesn’t come to visit; he comes to have his fire stoked.

  Mama offers him her cheek but he doesn’t kiss her nice, more like he’s wiping his oily mouth on a rag. He ignores Grandma and leers at Jubilee when Mama’s back is turned before swinging open the screen door and thrusting himself inside.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asks Mr. Havens.

  “This is Mr. Clayton Havens, and his companion, Mr. Massey, is out with Del.” Mama hastens to add a brief account of how the men happen to be here.

  Uncle Eddie ignores Mr. Havens’s hand and fixes on his camera instead. “They said one’s a picture-taker, so that must be you.” Uncle Eddie doesn’t give Mr. Havens a chance to speak. “Folks in town have been wondering about the sudden appearance then disappearance of two Yankees and here they are, consorting in my own sister’s house and me not even knowing. My, my, my.”

  “Just until Mr. Havens here recovers from his snake bite, is all.”

  “Why’re you so jumpy, Gladden?” Uncle Eddie slumps into Pa’s chair and bids Willow-May to come sit on his lap even though she’s two sizes too big for that. “Take our picture,” he orders Mr. Havens.

  “Yes, please, Mr. Havens, please.” Willow-May is bouncing on Uncle Eddie’s lap until he collars her to sit still.

  “Mr. Buford and I have an agreement, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, Del’s had Mr. Havens promise not to take any pictures, Eddie.”

  Uncle Eddie says, “If I keeled over and died, Del wouldn’t bat an eye, so why would he care if someone took a picture of me?” He flags Mama to his side. “Gladden’s got to be in it, too.” He glares at Mr. Havens. “You print your own pictures?”

  Mr. Havens says it would require a small dark room and that his chemicals are still at Sylvia Fullhart’s, but yes, he develops his own pictures.

  “It’s settled, then. You’ll take our picture and print it and give it to Gladden so she can put it up on her mantle.”

  There is no talking Uncle Eddie out of it.

  “Are you sure, Mrs. Buford?”

  Mama faces Mr. Havens with a caved-in look while Uncle Eddie smarts. “ ’Course she’s sure!”

  Mr. Havens situates his camera and assesses the window light, then asks Mama to move a little forward and turn her face slightly to the left. It’s a good while that he views them through his camera and fiddles with the knobs, and Uncle Eddie, stomach sucked in all this time, grows impatient and snaps, “Are you going to take the damn picture or not?”

  As if to avoid buckshot, Mama flinches at the sound of the click and bolts to the kitchen, and Uncle Eddie pushes Willow-May off his lap, stands with his chest puffed out, and orders Mr. Havens to take one of him on his own, which turns into several pictures until Mr. Havens insists on taking his camera back to his room.

  Uncle Eddie asks Jubilee why she hasn’t yet poured him a drink. “Seems to me you could do with a lesson in manners.” Uncle Eddie first checks to see no one is looking before thrusting his hips at her. “You’ve got a lot to learn about a lot of things.”

  “I’d prefer to stay ignorant.”

  A runaway once took up with Uncle Eddie, but when it was rumored that he was keeping her shackled, he took her to church and married her in front of everyone. Two days later she was gone. Ever since then, he’s had his eye on Jubilee. To serve as his next servant, she reckons.

  Mr. Havens returns, and Uncle Eddie asks Mama why Jubilee’s not wearing her veil, with guests around. “Until you get used to it, it’ll put you off your food,” he tells Mr. Havens.

  Giving the impression he’s biting down real hard on something, Mr. Havens says, “I think I might get some fresh air, Mrs. Buford, if you’ll excuse me.”

  Jubilee offers her assistance, then thinks better of it—many in town are afraid of being stained or coming away cursed or falling down dead at the touch of a Blue—but Mr. Havens quickly reaches for her hand and holds it as though it were a silk purse. His hand is warm and large and wraps all the way around hers. He chooses the rocking chair at the far end of the porch.

  “I have a hard time believing that man in there could even be related to you.”

  “I don’t pay him any attention. You shouldn’t either.”

  “What kind of man talks to a lady that way!” Mr. Havens is riled up, and going on about respect, but she’s fixed on that one word, “lady.” No one’s ever called her that before. “I hope you know that what he said in there is not anything like how I regard you.”

  She tries keeping her heart from beating any faster.

  “I think you’re beautiful.”

  It’s folly to search someone’s eyes to determine if he’s telling the truth—it’s the hands that give a person away, big sure gestures. When Mr. Havens delivers his compliment, his hands are relaxed and still, one wrist resting on the back of the other.

  “And now, I’ve embarrassed you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  “He never knew his own daddy, and I suppose that can make a person sour.” She doesn’t know why she’s making excuses for Uncle Eddie. She explains the enmity that’s gone on for years between Pa and Uncle Eddie on the issue of inheritance, Uncle Eddie insisting Ma’s considerable dowry was the reason he was left with only the small parcel of land at the bottom of the holler and Pa insisting that even the most fertile land won’t yield profits without labor.

  Mr. Havens absorbs it all, and asks for more, this time how long Bufords have lived in the area.

  “My great-grandparents moved here from Lexington.” She tells about Everet Buford leaving Ireland to escape the potato famine and setting up a cabinet-making business in Lexington, and meeting Pearl, the childless war widow, and suddenly it’s not just nerves that makes her talk so, but his being so interested in everything.

  “What made them move all the way out here?”

  “Their baby girl, Opal. She was the first one born blue.” Out it pops.

  “Her parents must have been so scared they were going to lose her.”

  “Everyone thought she would die that first day, but she didn’t. Nothing the doctors did could fix it, and eventually they gave up and said for her to be moved to the mountains to see if clean air would cure it, and by then my great-grandparents had had their fill of prying eyes and wagging tongues. So, here’s as far as you can get from anywhere.”

  “And Opal didn’t die?” Mr. Havens guesses.

  “No, and two years later, she had a little brother, Aubrey, who was right-colored, and then two other brothers came along after that, and both of them were blue.” Jubilee gives Mr. Havens the short version of Everet’s sending word of land-owning opportunities to his youngest brother, Langston, who arrived in the area with his two motherless children, and likewise Pearl’s brother, Arthur Price, and his family, and that the three families lived and farmed and prospered in offspring, offspring who grew up and married and had children of their own. What she leaves out, though, is that one of the offspring is Mama, the grandchild of Arthur and May Price, and another is Pa, the first and only right-colored of four sons born to Opal and, yes, Langston, her uncle. Mama won’t speak of this and Pa professes a muddling in his mind as to how tightly kin is related, but follow one strand from Pa and it will be knotted with one from Mama, and further back, knotted with itself. That this is why blue babies were not altogether uncommon in the families is something she definitely won’t tell.

  “There used to be a whole bunch of relatives, but it’s just us now. I think that’s mostly why Mama puts up with Uncle Eddie.”

  Mr. Havens asks what hap
pened to the others, but Jubilee spies Pa and Mr. Massey making their way to the house, and hurries out to caution Pa about Uncle Eddie. When Uncle Eddie visits, Pa always has a ditch that suddenly needs digging or a fence that needs mending, but instead of doing an about-turn now, Pa takes the stairs two at a time and rushes inside.

  What Uncle Eddie and Pa discuss soon turns to raised voices.

  “Unless you intend to have her live all her days with you, I’m the best offer she’s ever going to get!” yells Uncle Eddie.

  Mama’s got her apron pressed to her lips and Pa’s shaking his head as though he were a wet dog. A sick feeling comes over Jubilee. For Uncle Eddie, with his sorry deficiencies in character and estate, there’s no one worse off than a Blue. He doesn’t want her; he needs her to step on so he can keep himself from the mud. Jubilee looks around, dismayed to see from Mr. Havens’s frowning face that he has heard all this, too.

  Pa says he’s not letting his daughter go off with anyone, least of all Uncle Eddie. “You can’t even take care of your own livestock, much less a wife.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk, letting your mongrels run loose.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Word gets out that your boy is fooling around with the preacher’s daughter and that’s going to bring a whole lot of trouble this way again. Seems to me a concerned father would want to keep his daughter out of harm’s way.”

  Pa turns to Mama. “Do you know anything about this?” He sees Jubilee in the doorway, and asks her the same question.

  “Where’s your boy now, Delbert? You don’t have any idea, do you?” Uncle Eddie jabbers on about having seen Levi and Sarah at the old Granger place, and Pa is still waiting for Jubilee to answer.

  Rather than give up Levi, she declares, “I won’t ever marry a man I don’t love!”

  Leaden, Pa tells Uncle Eddie he will take care of the matter.

  “I don’t know.” Uncle Eddie drags out his words. “This predicament’s put me in an awful bind, Delbert, me being Urnamy Gault’s close business associate and all.” It’s true that Mayor Gault and Uncle Eddie ran in the same circles as boys, but “business associate” means only that whenever he’s short on money, Uncle Eddie peddles the crappie he fishes out of Granger’s pond to Gault. “If he finds out I knew my nephew was moving in on his son’s sweetheart and didn’t say anything to him, it’ll jeopardize our business arrangements, and where will that leave me?”

  “Levi will never see the girl again,” Pa swears.

  Uncle Eddie tests his bloated foot before heaving himself out of the chair. “Putting that Blue of yours on a leash is not likely to do the trick this time.” Uncle Eddie hobbles toward the door. On his way out, he says, “But my offer for this one still stands.”

  Jubilee follows him down the steps. “Don’t tell anyone about Levi. Please!”

  He appraises her chest. “A man with his hands full at home doesn’t have time to go out talking to folks, does he?”

  * * *

  When Levi returns from delivering Socall’s shine, Pa doesn’t wait for him to take off his coat before he starts demanding answers about Sarah, and how Levi owns up is by glaring at Jubilee. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you?”

  Pa talks over Jubilee. “Don’t be blaming your sister for any of this. It’s Eddie who saw the two of you—him and who-knows-who-else.”

  “Why do you even let Eddie step foot on our property?” Levi fumes. “You know he’ll turn on us for a bottle of beer!”

  “You make my point, son, but he’ll have nothing to tell if there’s nothing between you and the girl except for a happenstance encounter.”

  “And what if what’s between me and Sarah is not happenstance?”

  Pa and Mama exchange weary looks. Pa rubs his bloodshot eyes and stands at the window, where he has a view of his fields all torn up. In the same tone he used when he told Levi his dog had to be put out of its misery, Pa says, “Sarah’s a ticket too dear for your pocket, son.”

  “Why? Because she’s right-colored?”

  “You’ve got to wonder about a girl that pretty who has her pick—”

  Levi lifts his hand before Mama can finish her sentence. “I’m her pick, don’t you get it? She picked me because she can be herself with me, because I don’t judge her on her looks or how she ought to act on account of her last name.”

  “You promised your pa you’d never pair up with a Right-colored,” Mama says.

  “Which might as well mean pair up not at all!” Full of spit and fire, Levi turns to Pa. “Why does it always have to come down to color?”

  “Son, you don’t think there are some Negroes and whites in this state who wish they could be together who haven’t asked the same thing?” You’re not special, in other words, Pa’s saying.

  “Yes, but at least black folks have one another. Jubilee and I are alone. If Gault finds out about me and Sarah, let him. So what if they come after me? I’ll be ready.”

  “And what makes you so sure they’ll come for you and not also for Jubilee?” Pa’s rebuke takes the stuffing out of Levi. “How do I keep your sister safe? Is Eddie right in proposing I have her move in with him?”

  “I am not going to marry Eddie,” Jubilee insists.

  “Eddie’s to stay the hell away from her,” Levi says, but Pa’s appeal is working. In a weaker voice, he says, “It should be nobody’s concern but mine.”

  “What concerns you, concerns all of us, and we all know Gault’s boy has been spoiling for another fight. Except this time, womenfolk are involved.”

  The silence is like a crowbar trying to pry loose every last portent.

  Levi’s shoulders sag. “Okay, I’ll call it off.”

  “The sooner the better,” Pa adds.

  Mama rubs Levi’s arm. “We know this must seem awful unfair, but in time you’ll see—”

  He shakes Mama off. “Just keep Eddie away from Jubilee.”

  Jubilee should feel glad—without Sarah, Levi will be safer—but there’s something about him now that reminds her of the melancholy depicted in Mr. Havens’s pictures of people, that somehow what’s been taken from them can’t ever be replaced.

  HAVENS

  All morning Havens has been sitting on the porch with the bird, first trying to give the impression he wasn’t waiting for Jubilee and then doing his best to signal that he was. Still she has not made an appearance. Eddie’s visit yesterday left everyone in a somber mood, Jubilee especially, and before it was yet fully dark, everyone had retired, Buford bedding down on the porch having rigged a system of tripwires and tin cans filled with stones around the house’s perimeter. Today Havens has overheard the family talking of raids as in the past, and right now they are inside agreeing that Jubilee is to stay close to home and that Levi’s delivery of moonshine to Socall’s customers this afternoon will be his last for a while. In an effort to reassure his wife, Buford is offering to ride down to Eddie’s place to gauge his inclinations, which is raising a debate about the merits of letting sleeping dogs lie.

  Something catches Havens’s attention. About forty yards from the house, the grandmother is hurrying toward the woods, one hand clutching her suitcase and the other clamped to her head to keep her bonnet from flying off. Because he doesn’t know her name, he calls out, “Grandma!” If anything, she accelerates. Climbing off the porch, Havens cups his hands around his mouth. “Come back, Grandma!”

  Jubilee overtakes Havens at the water pump, and catches up to the old woman, puts her arm around her, and steers her back.

  “Where was she going?” Havens accompanies them to the house.

  “She’s got her times mixed up again. She thinks it’s back when Blues started disappearing, and she wants to go with the families who decided to leave the holler.”

  The old woman utters not one word, but tests Jubilee’s grip every few steps and looks longingly over her shoulder at the retreating woods.

  “They’re gone, Grandma.
You stay with us now.”

  “What do you mean, people disappearing?” Havens asks.

  “Pa’s eldest cousin, Sherman, was the first to disappear and no one ever found any sign of him, then one of the Ellis’s sons was found drowned in the creek—that’s Pa’s cousin on his sister’s side. And summer that same year, the Prices lost both their sons to the coal mine, an accident supposedly, but everyone knew different. They were Blues, is why.”

  “Wasn’t there an investigation?”

  “The law has never been quick to investigate what happens to families with Blues,” she answers. “Everyone figured they were on their own, and the consensus was to leave the area.”

  “But not your father.”

  “Levi and I hadn’t been born yet, so Pa didn’t figure he and Mama needed to uproot, and then when Levi came along, it didn’t seem on the scale as before. Besides, Pa had heard from some of his kin that they were no better off in Tennessee, some even worse. Better the devil you know, Pa maintains.” She thanks Havens for his help and ushers her grandmother inside while Massey, having holed himself up in the barn to write, joins Havens on the porch.

  “You hearing this?” he says, listening to the Bufords through the open window.

  Havens nods.

  “Is Gladden really serious?” Massey asks under his breath. “She wants to recruit some tenant farmers and a few Negroes to help them form some kind of defense?”

  “If Ronny hears about Levi and Sarah, she’s convinced a posse will come up here.”

  “Oh, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet Ronny will hear about it. That Eddie guy is a rat through and through.”

  Havens beckons Massey to sit close, then fills him in on the grandmother running for the hills, and Massey becomes charged by the explanation Jubilee gave, eager to corroborate her claims and drive home the premise of his article, that prejudice left unchecked always ends in foul play.