It is later now and right much has happened since I broke off. The main thing is, I was holding Sledge when Mama came down to find Milo. I hadn’t seen Mama since breakfast but I knew the worst right away. I said he was outdoors so she stepped to the porch and called him. He must have come running because I could hear him panting in the hall. Mama told him, “It never even breathed” and he broke down. Then they went up to Sissie but I couldn’t follow—mostly because I had Sledge still to feed. He seems to take to me now so I stuck with him. He is the picture of Mildred. But I told you that.
This means I won’t be accepting your Thanksgiving invitation—not that I am needed here but I couldn’t leave after this. Things will have to be quiet awhile.
Thank you Wesley, and excuse me now please, Rosacoke
When the letter was done she felt she had stayed away long as she could, that her duty was to go upstairs and speak her regrets. She stood and smoothed her hair and rinsed her hands at the sink, but before she went she tipped to the stove to check on Sledge in his box. She reckoned he was asleep, having eaten just lately, but in case he wasn’t she stopped where he wouldn’t see her. And he wasn’t. He was fumbling quietly with his dark hands at his eyes against the light. She stood a long time, watching, trying to picture his face as a boy’s or a man’s, but his features were closed on themselves like tight brown buds on a mystery-tree in spring. All she could see was Mildred that last cold day in the road, and it seemed to her she was more use here than upstairs talking to people that were each other’s comfort so she took Sledge instead and sat back down and laid him in the groove of her lap, hoping she could make him smile one time and then go to sleep. She did a few quiet jokes with her face and hands to please him, but he only stared with his black eyes grave and his lips crouched cautious against her, and soon she gave up trying and commenced to sway her legs and hum low, and he twisted to the left and buried his face in her thigh and slid off to sleep. She waited. Then when it seemed safe she shifted one leg and rolled him back towards her, and he smiled at last as if in his sleep he saw better jokes than what she could offer. But that was all right. That was enough. And she sat still, hearing his steady sighing till she was nodding herself with her hands beneath his head.
Then Mary came to the door. “You done changed your mind about Sledge, ain’t you, Miss Rosa?”
“No. He has changed his mind about me.”
“Yes’m, he sure is. He don’t let many hold him that way. He is a shoulder baby.” She stepped towards Rosacoke and lowered her voice—“Well, give him here and you go on upstairs. I don’t want him keeping you from your folks. Miss Sissie is sleep but Mr. Milo is setting by hisself in the front bedroom.”
So Rosacoke passed Sledge to Mary and was almost at the door when the question came to her. “Mary, what is that baby’s name?—Mildred’s baby.”
Mary looked to the box. “I expect it’s Ransom, Miss Rosa, but they ain’t said nothing about feeding him.”
Then Rosacoke went out and up the cold stairs, shivering. The door was shut where Sissie was, and she went on to the front room that was Papa’s before he died. She knocked lightly there. Somebody made an answering sound and she opened on darkness. (Papa had never let them wire his room for light.) She said, “Who is in here?”
Milo said, “Me and this baby.”
She had suspected that. She stood on in the door, seeing nothing, feeling nothing but the warmth of the room leaking past her, and finally she said, “Could I bring you a lamp or something?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll be saying good night then, I guess.” She stood a little longer, wondering what else she could say to a pitch-dark room. But he hadn’t asked for anything else. He hadn’t even said “Step in,” and anyhow he was Milo and she hadn’t been close to Milo for years, not since Sissie Abbott took hold and taught him whatever it was that changed him from a serious boy to the fool who sang her the Santa Claus jingle not two weeks ago. Then she closed the door and went to her own room across the hall. She took off her clothes in the dark and stretched out to rest. But she didn’t sleep. She heard a man’s footsteps leave Sissie’s room and go downstairs and a car driving off. That would be Dr. Sledge. Then Mama came out and went to Milo and asked was he setting up all night? He said “Yes” and Mama said, “Son, I have got to rest. How come you don’t go set in yonder with Sissie? I’ll send Mary in here.” Milo said, “Did Sissie tell you to ask me that?” Mama said “Yes” and he said “Get Mary first” so Mama went down and sent Mary up, and then there was the sound of Milo walking past Rosacoke’s door towards Sissie Abbott. When Rosacoke had heard that she said to herself, “They will all get over this soon. Wasn’t that a child they never saw alive or called by name? It was God’s own will and Christmas is coming. Just sleep.” Then she slept.
* * *
Sunday afternoon when it was time, Mama and the preacher were upstairs with Sissie who was not resigned, and Milo was shut in Papa’s room. He had been there since Mary left that morning. He had seen two people all day—Mama and Macey Gupton—and he had spoken twice. (When Mama took him breakfast he said, “Get Macey and ask him will he go to Warrenton for the casket.” Macey did that and after dinner when Mama had ironed him a shirt and taken in his clothes and asked was he ready, he said “In a little.”) But Rosacoke was ready. She had been ready since ten o’clock when Mama came to her in the kitchen and said, “You have got to go speak to Sissie” so she went and just by opening the door, shook Sissie out of sleep. Sissie said, “You woke me up.” Rosacoke said, “I am sorry for that too,” and Sissie cried, not hiding her face but staring at the ceiling. Rosacoke had seen Sissie do a number of things but not cry silent so she went to the steps and called Mama. Then she went to her room and dressed in what black she had and waited for three o’clock.
At three she stepped on the porch to make a last arrangement with Macey who stood in the yard. She walked to the steps and said, “Macey, will you carry the casket?” He said that would be an honor but was Milo ready? She said “I hope so” and Macey laid his hat on the steps and went towards the door but was stopped by the preacher coming out and Baby Sister and Milo and, behind them, Mama who would stay with Sissie. (None of Sissie’s people knew. It was how she wanted it.) Milo had the casket in his arms. It looked about the size of a package you could mail.
Macey said, “Milo, let Macey tote that.”
But Milo said, “Thank you, no. I will,” and they went to the car. Milo and the preacher sat in back. Rosacoke and Baby Sister sat in front with Macey who would drive.
Macey said “Ready?”
Milo said “Yes” and they cranked up and rolled to the road and turned right. Just before the house passed out of sight, Rosacoke looked back, and Mama still stood in the door, her black dress against the black hall behind her, and her white arms bare, surely cold. Rosacoke turned to the road and knowing they would ride in silence, chose that sight of Mama to fill her mind through the slow half-mile to Mr. Isaac’s when she looked again—at the day this time. She thought, “It is the kind of day nobody wanted”—still and gray and low but so clear the wrenched, bare cherries looked gouged on the pond with some hard point—and she wondered, “Does Mr. Isaac know of this?” But she didn’t speak aloud—there was nothing he could do with the news—so they passed him too, and none of them looked at each other, and since the pines were next, Rosacoke didn’t think again but watched the road. A wind began and kept up the rest of the way—nothing serious but strong enough to twist little cones of dust in gullies and when they could see Delight, to sway Landon Allgood, the one person waiting, black by the grave he had dug.
Nobody else came. Nobody else knew (except what Negroes passed on the road and stared), and there was nothing but a few words said at the grave. What could they say but his name (which was Horatio Mustian the third)? Then Milo and Macey did the lowering. Landon put on his cap and came forward to shovel, giving off sweet paregoric like his natural scent, and they all headed back for
the car—the men and Baby Sister first and Rosacoke falling in last. But before she had gone ten feet, Landon said, “Miss Rosa”—she stopped and he took off his cap—“I am mighty sorry for you.”
She studied him a moment, wondering what he thought he was burying. She pointed half behind her and said, “It was Milo’s boy.”
“Yes’m,” Landon said and stepped back to his work, and she went on to the others and they went home. Nobody had cried and what Rosacoke had noticed most was the new red dirt Landon threw on her father to fill his sinking.
And nobody cried riding home or during the supper they ate without speaking or, after Milo went up to Sissie (to sleep on a cot by her bed), during the long evening in the front room with Mama writing Rato the news and Baby Sister acting her paper dolls through flesh-and-blood stories till finally they all turned in. So Monday, seeing no real job at home, Rosacoke went to work and sent Wesley her long letter by Special Delivery without even looking to know what it said, knowing she hadn’t faced up to Wesley yet—what he had done and wanted to do—but having in the death for awhile one thing big enough to hold her mind off whatever troubles she had. And the death worked in her like a drug, not making her sad but numbing the day while she worked and the cold ride home that night.
She was late getting home Tuesday night. It had rained all morning and in the afternoon turned cold, and the roads froze too slick for speed. It was nearly six-thirty when she walked up the yard to the house, and Mama met her at the door, saying, “Where have you been? You are too late now and I wish you had never worked today. Milo has broke our hearts. Directly you left this morning he drove off. He didn’t say a word about where, and he left me with every bit of Sissie to handle and me thinking all day long he had gone off somewhere drinking like your Daddy. Well, nobody here laid eyes on him till a hour ago when he come in so quiet I didn’t hear him. I was cooking our supper but Baby Sister was in the front room yonder. She had come home from school and dragged out some naked baby doll and was mothering that—singing to it. He went in there and just set by the fire. In a little Baby Sister took it in her head to go upstairs and ask Sissie could she have a few clothes to dress up that naked doll. She didn’t mean harm but Sissie started crying and called for me. I didn’t hear her but Milo did and tore upstairs, and when he saw the trouble, he grabbed up all the baby clothes he could find and said he couldn’t pass another night with them things here and was taking them to Mildred Sutton’s baby. Sissie couldn’t stop him so she hollered, ‘Yes, take every stitch. They are no use to me no more. The woman you get to have your other babies can buy her own mess or let all ten run naked.’ Well, I heard that and caught Milo at the door and told him them things was too little for Sledge but I couldn’t stop him. He was gone. He is still gone and hasn’t eat a mouthful this whole day, and I don’t know is he drinking or not.”
Rosacoke said, “Give me the flashlight and I will go find him.”
“I can’t let you go in the dark,” Mama said. “I was just getting ready to call up Macey and ask him to go.”
But Rosacoke said, “Don’t call in the Guptons for any more Mustian business.” So Mama gave her the flashlight, and she went out towards Mary’s. It was colder already and the sky was clouded. What moon there would be hadn’t risen, but as long as she walked through open fields, she could see without light, and when she came to the black pines, she tried to walk in darkness—she knew every inch of the way and she wasn’t scared—but the path was loud with frozen leaves and a briar caught at her leg so she switched on the light and walked in its yellow circle till she came out at Mary’s. The only light at Mary’s was shining from the kitchen where an oil lamp burned. Rosacoke flashed her beam round the yard to check for the turkey that was roosting high. Then she went to the front and knocked.
Mary came with a lamp and said, “Miss Rosa, it’s you” and stepped on the porch and shut the door. “Miss Rosa, he is here and I think he is better now, but when he come I didn’t know what would happen. He must have crept in while I was back in the kitchen because when I heard a noise in the front room and went to the door to see, he was there, just standing over Mildred’s baby, staring down wild at all them clothes he had throwed on the bed. Child, I thought he was crazy, and I didn’t do nothing but tip on back to the kitchen and get me a knife. I flung open that kitchen door, and I said, ‘Sweet Jesus, come in here and help me.’ Then I went back to do my duty, but he had eased and looked like hisself and was setting down by that baby, and when I said ‘Good evening,’ he just said, ‘Mary, please cook me some eggs.’ I said, ‘Yes sir, Mr. Milo, and you come talk to me while I fix them,’ and he is eating right now in the kitchen.”
A Long and Happy Life Page 11
