by Cheryl Reid
My house was no longer my own. Had I ever loved Elias, the presence of Father McMurray and Sisters Hilda and Agnes might have comforted me. I might have found solace in the thirty men from the Knights of Columbus and their wives packed into my living room, but I was nauseated by the smells of sour breath mingling with hot wax from the burning candles and the altar boys’ relentless swinging of the censer, filling the air with sweet-smelling smoke.
The air was burdened. We were too many fish in a bowl and the air could not support us all. Father McMurray’s pink face streamed with sweat. He droned on about “a good man” and “love and grief for Elias,” and how he was “a pillar of the community, a good Catholic,” and on and on. My chest constricted at how Father could lie so openly in God’s name, knowing Elias had gone to intimidate Mr. Washington. I gripped my brother’s sleeve.
The sun set. A chorus of solemn voices repeated: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art Thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
People whispered, “Do you want to be closer?”
“No.” I stood one foot in the room, the other on the porch. “I need the air.” I would have drifted outside, past my father, to the road and then walked away if not for Gus and his thick, warm palm gently holding my bandaged hand, keeping me put.
Cars passed slowly to see the vigil—the Catholics praying to Mary, windows open, candles burning, the rhythmic prayer flowing out to the street.
If men appeared tonight, as they had the last two nights at Orlando Washington’s place, no one would be surprised. They could come because of my faith or because of their suspicions of me and Orlando Washington or because they blamed me for Elias’s death. Few would flinch if they carried me off or burned my house or lit a cross.
As a child, I had seen a cross burned after Midnight Mass on Christmas on the lawn of St. Patrick’s. Papa carried us. Gus in one arm, me in the other. “Don’t look. Close your eyes,” he said as he hurried to his truck. Gus gripped my hand against Papa’s back. I looked over his shoulder, so strangely beautiful it was to me, the flames in the sky, the popping wood, the smell of smoke. It reminded me of Mama’s oven. We knew already, but Papa told us, “You are Christian children, if anyone asks—never Catholic—just Christians.”
I grieved to see my children suffering. Eli’s mouth twisted in earnest prayer. His face was slick with sweat. I wondered what he prayed for, if it was for his father’s soul, or Orlando Washington, or me.
Every so often, Ivie turned to glare at me and I could make out the scratch I had given him at the store. Michael knelt behind Marina and kept his hand on the small of her back. All of them crowded up near the casket and swayed to the rhythms of prayer. If one of them fell, they would go like a row of dominoes.
I stared at the veiled heads of Nelly and Marina and realized I had been preoccupied with my father and forgotten to wear the veil to show respect for the dead. There would be tomorrow for that. We were not in church and I felt I was drowning in the thick air.
Nelly clung like a tick on Marina. All evening the old woman had been whispering in her ear. I didn’t need to be able to hear her words. She was dropping seeds of doubt:
Why was the colored mailman here?
Why is your father dead?
He was healthy.
He was young.
She killed him.
For that mailman.
I knew Nelly’s accusations rang like a bell in Marina’s ear between breaths of prayer.
Marina’s face sank with every word from Nelly and each passing prayer. Marina’s labor was coming. I could see the discomfort in her face and how she held her belly. She was too stubborn to admit it.
She’d placed photographs of him on every surface. When I looked away from his corpse, my eyes fell on photographs of him and his children. And ones of him in Lebanon, at the church in Tyre, and another on a donkey’s back, another beneath a pergola covered in grapevines. Even one of us on our wedding day. There was the porcelain sign from the store. She’d made Eli fetch it and she’d taped the photograph of Elias and the lion to it.
I rested my head on Gus’s shoulder and breathed his lime aftershave. The last prayer for the dead ended after eight. The priest said, “Go in peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Marina and all gave the sign of the cross. The priest offered his hand to help Marina stand. She levered herself up on her own. Michael motioned to make way and declined any company. The room held its breath as she hobbled to the kitchen, but when she was out of sight, whispers grew to full voices.
Nelly sat like a stone, her large, wet eyes fixed on Elias. The mourners stood and began to file slowly out the front door.
Gus led me out ahead of the crowd. The night air was heavy and humid, but a welcome retreat from the trapped heat of breath and bodies and incense. We stood on the top step of the porch, shook hands and said goodbye to the people spilling out. The men nodded solemnly. The church ladies squeezed my good hand and touched my arm. “Peace be with you,” they said.
“Peace be with you,” I responded.
On the porch, Papa sat like a penned bull, moaning and snorting as thoughts passed through his mind. I had never seen him so agitated, even worse than yesterday when he told me to leave town and gave me money. Was he thinking of the day that he gave in to my pleadings and told me I could marry Elias, or the day Mama died, or the day I returned home to Elias? As I told people good night, I watched Papa and looked past him at the windows blazing in candlelight, as if the house were on fire.
The Scene
When the last church member left the vigil, Gus and I stayed put beneath the pecan tree. Father McMurray remained inside with my family, whose restive voices spilled out onto the lawn. Neither Gus nor I wanted to be inside with Nelly, Ivie, or the corpse in the casket, so we hid in the shadows with the cicadas thrumming and Papa rocking in the chair on the porch.
Marina stared out of the window, but I felt sure she could not see us, because it was a new moon and the night was darker than usual. I was on the outside looking in, where I had always been, and where I would be from now on. Marina crossed the room to the priest and Nelly, who looked shriveled and small next to them. They guided Nelly into the hall and they disappeared from my view. The thought of Marina so close to Nelly made me sick. “I want this to be over,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” Gus said. He sparked his lighter and lit a cigarette, and clouds of tobacco smoke hung in the air.
“Two things in my life I did on my own,” I said. “I married Elias and I helped that man. Both turned to shit.”
“You didn’t know any better when you married him.”
“Papa knew, and I didn’t listen.” Candles glowed in the window and the warm light seemed to flood the house. The only spot of darkness was the end of his casket.
“You stay with us if it comes to it.” Gus inhaled and the orange tip of his cigarette lengthened.
“Thank you,” I said. Lila had offered already and they were generous to want to take me in. If I stayed, the awful heat would be gone in eight weeks’ time and the migrant birds would be back—the geese, the cranes, the herons, and the ducks. The baby would be sleeping through the night, and with some luck, I would have ridden the swell of Marina’s anger and the town’s outrage.
Gus took a long drag and slowly exhaled the smoke. “I know you didn’t do anything to Elias.” His tone was hopeful because he believed the best of me. “If you go, you’ll go for a few weeks, a month, then come back home.”
Papa’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. He was listening as he had when we were children. Back then, he pricked his ears to learn what we were up to, and then only if necessary did he interfere.
I plucked a fig from the tree, turned the skin inside out, and ate it. “Is that what you think I should do?” The fruit was sweet and ripe.
; “For now.” Gus’s Adam’s apple rested above his collar and tie. He took one last drag and tossed the butt out into the grass. “All this will blow over,” he said, but he did not sound convinced.
I touched Gus’s sleeve and pointed to Nelly passing in front of the window. “What makes a person so hateful?”
Gus snuffed out the butt with the sole of his shoe. “I don’t know why people do the things they do. I just do what Lila tells me.” The outline of his smile showed in the dim night. He was good at making light and putting me at ease.
In the window of the house, Father McMurray returned to view. He stood above the corpse and lowered the casket lid. Nelly was no longer visible. She was somewhere near Marina, unfettered by the priest and saying what she pleased.
“What will Mr. Washington do?” I wanted to talk to Eli and learn Mr. Washington’s plans, but talking to Eli meant going inside with Nelly and Ivie.
“The man fought in a war.” Gus loosened his tie and took it off. “I don’t suspect this is much different.” He rolled the tie and put it in his pants pocket.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I wanted absolution from Gus for my part in Mr. Washington’s troubles. If Gus said that I had done the right thing, and that asking him inside was an innocent mistake, I would feel some vindication.
Across the street, Verna’s porch light flickered on and then off.
“You need to worry about yourself.” Gus flipped his lighter and slapped it shut again, then took out another cigarette and lit it. He fidgeted when he was nervous.
Papa coughed and the rocker creaked under his weight. He was still listening to everything we said.
“They burned his house,” I said. The night was muggy and hot, but a chill ran over my skin in rhythm with the cicadas. “They took away his home. His livelihood.”
“They may come after you.” Gus took a drag and he looked up at the sky. There was no moon, and the sky was littered with stars.
“He was your friend and you don’t care about what happens to him?” I stared at the windows where the candle flames danced and my eyes burned.
“Not my friend.”
“Of course he was,” I said. “And don’t you remember Thea taking care of us?”
“Papa paid her,” he said. “It was her job.”
“You were little and don’t remember, but she was with Mama when she died,” I said. “We should look after her son.”
“If he was going about things as normal, yes.” He blew out a line of smoke in the darkness. “But he’s threatening a way of life.”
“One man doing a job does not threaten anything.” I searched the outline of his face for some understanding. His face pinched in a scowl.
“That’s it,” Gus said. “You don’t see. It’s not just him. There will be more like him breaking up the order of things and there will be more violence.” Gus spent his life mixing on both sides. Negro farmers were most of the customers on his route. He worked in Papa’s store in Mounds. “That crew that burned his house may come after you.”
“You grew up with him, and you don’t feel some compassion?”
“I am not one of them.” His voice was filled with frustration. “Neither are you. It’s not your fight.” Gus saw himself and us as white, I knew. He grew up in the middle of Mounds, but he felt above everyone there, even though the Riverton kids heckled us. He didn’t think about the people we came from. He wanted to squeeze into the white world as best he could.
“Nelly will say you let him in your front door, and Elias is dead twelve hours later.” Gus’s words sounded like a sentencing, and in his voice I heard his frustration. He did not believe I could go away for a week or two or a month and return.
“Nobody knows the truth,” I said.
“Well, what is the truth?”
I felt his eyes on me. “I gave the man a glass of water. Then Elias came in and nearly killed me, and left me on the floor to go intimidate him. That is the truth.”
He took another drag, then snuffed it on the sole of his gleaming black shoe and tossed it away.
“When Elias got home, I was already asleep and he had a heart attack.” I was glad for the dark, so that my brother could not see the heat on my skin. I did not want to lie to him, but there was no other way to stay and know my grandchild. “That is the truth.”
“I’m on your side,” Gus said. “And all I want is you to be safe and to do my work and take care of my girls. I don’t want you run out of town.” Gus touched my arm and I felt some relief, hearing his words.
“There she is, the grieving widow,” Ivie called from the porch. We looked up at him raising a silver flask in the glowing doorframe. His dark silhouette looked like a devilish figure. “I thought maybe you were hiding from me.”
“I need a drink,” Gus said under his breath. He took a handkerchief and wiped the sweat beading on his brow. “God help me I don’t kill that bastard.”
“Hey, Gus. Did I hear you want a drink?” Ivie stumbled down the stairs. “Well, here I am.”
I bowed my head and hoped Ivie would walk on, past us and back to his shack behind his mother’s house. What else had he heard between Gus and me?
Papa rose from the chair. His shoes scuffed across the limestone porch and he leaned against the rail.
“You truly are good for nothing,” Gus said. Gus was not as tall as Ivie, but he was stout and compact in the shoulders and legs. He was sober, too, and could run over Ivie if given the chance.
“Me?” Ivie reeked of whiskey. “I’m good for a drink.” He slapped Gus’s shoulders.
“Don’t touch me,” Gus said.
Ivie held his hands up in mock surrender. “Trying to be hospitable,” he said and took another swig from his flask.
“Go home, Ivie,” I said. I grabbed Gus’s arm and hoped to lead him inside.
“It’s not me that’s going anywhere,” Ivie said.
“Let’s go in, Gus.” I tugged on Gus and tried pulling him toward the candlelit house, but Gus’s feet were planted.
“Mama tried to tell Elias all those years ago. But he fought for you.” He tipped the flask to his lips. “That’s funny, ain’t it?” he jeered. “If he’d just left you alone, he’d be alive, and you’d be where you belong in Blacktown.”
Gus stepped close to Ivie. “Go back to your hole and crawl in it.”
“You’re the one can’t control your women.” Ivie stooped to put his face level with Gus’s. “Not your wife, not your sister.”
Papa took slow, careful steps down the porch stairs. I wanted to stop him from lumbering toward us, but I needed to get between Ivie and Gus.
Ivie smiled, wolflike. “In two days, my store will be running like nothing ever happened.”
Gus puffed his chest out and knocked Ivie back. “Now is not the time to talk about the store.”
“He’s drunk.” I pulled on Gus. “Let’s go in.”
“You worried I’m going to shut you out, Gus?” Ivie slurred his words.
Gus smirked. “Not at all.” He poked Ivie’s shoulder. “You won’t last. Your mama’s too old to roll your drunk ass out of bed and drive you to work every morning.”
“That’s enough,” Papa said. He stood behind Ivie and put his hand on Ivie’s arm. “Go on, now,” Papa said with authority, and at one time, out of respect or fear, Ivie would have obeyed him.
Gus put himself between our father and Ivie. “Go home.”
Ivie wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “This is my brother’s house. You leave.”
The three men shuffled around each other. Papa’s movements looked slow and painful. His back hunched and his knees and arms bent at jagged angles. Gus bobbed back and forth, trying to get around him at Ivie, and Ivie staggered around trying to grab at Gus.
“Stop this nonsense,” I said. “Let’s go inside.” I tugged at Gus and Papa. “Leave him.”
“Listen to her,” Ivie said. “She’s smarter than she looks. She pulled the big black wool over all of us.�
��
Gus’s nostrils flared. “You are nothing but a drunk.”
“You should know about that. Being married to one.” Ivie cackled.
“Show some respect.” Papa got his feet under him and gave Ivie a solid push.
Ivie rocked on his heels.
“Sober up and act like a man.” Papa’s voice sounded strong and young.
Gus butted up against Ivie to punctuate Papa’s words.
The hairs on my arms stood up. I could not get between them. “Michael!” I called for help and tried to separate them, but their bodies were mixed together. “Gus, stop this,” I said.
“Go home, old man,” Ivie said. He looked at me and jabbed at my shoulder. “And take this nigger-lover with you.”
The train let out a long blare near the river bridge. Then the wheels, metal against metal, and a steady hum of engine noise filled the night.
Ivie grabbed my bruised arms and pulled me into him. His whiskey-soured breath landed on my cheek. “Funny how you and Elias always shit on me, but you’re no better than me.”
“Let go of her.” Gus jerked me in the hopes of freeing me from Ivie’s grip.
Ivie let go and reared back to swing at Gus, but the blow landed in Papa’s face and he fell to the ground in a heap.
I screamed for help. “Michael! Marina!”
Verna’s light switched on.
From inside Marina yelled, “Mama?”
Papa lay like an ox stuck on his side and could not put himself right. Gus and I labored against Papa’s weight, and when we got him up and saw his bloody nose, Gus barreled into Ivie. They fell to the ground and rolled in the grass punching and pounding. The porch light came on and Father McMurray appeared over them. He yelled in his Irish brogue, “What’s going on? For heaven’s sake!”
Like two schoolboys, Ivie and Gus separated at the sound of Father’s voice. Ivie staggered and then bowed like he was on stage. “It’s all over, Father. A family misunderstanding, that’s all.”
