by Rod Davis
I turned right at the river road, toward the town. We passed empty buildings and a few others, like the White Front Café, a venerable hot tamale place, trying to hang on. The main square was dominated by the county courthouse. I remembered an odd factoid that I had once come across, that for some reason Bolivar County, one of the nation’s poorest, had two county seats. The other was back in Cleveland. I had never taken the trouble to find out why but assumed it was another barely explainable quirkiness of Delta history.
Rising up above the courthouse and the town and its kudzu-draped water tower to the west was the levee. On the other side of that, a long stretch of flat, fecund soil feeding dense forests and bounteous crop fields leading to the river’s edge. So long as it stayed in its banks. It seemed a strange way to live: because of and in spite of a great waterway so fearsome that protective mounds of earth more than a mile away could be breached as though they were nothing.
On one end of the courthouse lawn, a group of black women had set up a church rummage sale under a blue and white striped awning.
“Pull over. I want to ask them where this address is.”
Elle rolled down her window as we neared tables filled with secondhand clothes, rows of used furniture, garden tools, and lawn mowers. Another table was loaded with plates of cookies and pies. Next to it, soda pop cans floated in melted ice in a huge tub. You could tell it had rained earlier in the day by a few puddles.
I stopped near the cookie table. Elle leaned out her window. “Hey, y’all. Say, I wonder could someone help me with a question?”
A shapely woman in a floral print dress stepped over. She was about Elle’s age, maybe younger.
“You lost?”
“Not exactly. We’re trying to find a cousin of mine, and I’m not sure where Memphis Place might be.”
The woman looked at Elle closely, and at me, then tilted her head upward as though thinking it over. She turned to the ladies behind her. “Memphis Place? The one up in the New Place?”
“Not over there,” said one of the women, also in a print floral.“Just up the highway past where that trailer park is.”
“Where Brother Tyne and them live?”
“You know, maybe halfway.”
“Oh, yeah, where Sampson’s used to be.”
“That’s right. Memphis Place. Right in there, just off the highway.”
The first woman turned back to Elle. “Who you looking for, though?”
“Her name is Artula. Johnson, I think. Used to be Meridian.”
The woman looked back at the others, then at Elle again. She leaned in closer. “I know you? Behind those dark glasses?”
Elle glanced at me, then at the woman, and took off her shades.
“Sister, you okay in there?” But she was looking at me again.
“I’m fine. I am.”
“Ellie? Ellie Meridian from Oxford? That you?”
They studied each other.
“You used to come down here with your brother sometimes. Stayed in town and out south past the park, on the way to the lake. With some white folks part of the time.”
“I wish I could say who you are.”
“Claudia. Claudia Pettit. You know me. They call me Cici.”
Elle looked at me again, just the hint of a smile. I cut off the engine.
“Cici? Cici Pettit? Well of course I remember you. I’m sorry it took a minute. We went into Cleveland a couple of times for ice cream and parties at the church.”
“We did, girl, we did. But say, your eyes all red. Are you really okay?”
“I am. But, Young Henry, I have to tell you, he’s passed. We were just at the services up in Oxford.”
“No! T. Henry? He couldn’t be that old.”
“It was an accident.”
Cici reached through the window and touched Elle’s cheek. “I’m so sorry.”
“We’re just here going back to Alabama. It’s where I live now. I just wanted to drive by and see this place where, you know—”
“Sure, Ellie. I heard T. Henry was a schoolteacher up there somewhere. It’s been a while.”
“It has.”
“You? What do you do in Alabama?”
“I’m sort of a counselor. What about you?
“I’m still here. I teach at the school. Second grade. Went to Delta State and I guess I just never got away.”
“Married?”
Cici laughed and glanced back at her friends. “Married with children, as they say. That’s pretty much the way it is around here. You?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, park this truck and come over and let’s talk. This is no way to catch up.”
“I need to get up to Tula’s first. We can come back later on.”
“That’d be fine. You be sure and do that, though. But we about to close up at six.”
“We will.”
I cranked the engine.
“Say, you know your aunt come through here time to time. They call her Sister Lenora here. You know we don’t like that hoodoo around the church.” Then she winked. “But people say she’s good.”
Elle’s body tensed up. “You’ve seen Aunt Lenora?”
“Couple of months back, I guess. She comes in and sets up not too far from where you’re going. She stays maybe a week, or just a few days. Does some readings over in the New Place, that nasty old subdivision off there—” She waved her arm back around to her right. “Or whatever she does.”
“But she’s not here now?”
Cici looked in at me again. “Not that I know of.”
A dirt brown pickup with one dented white fender cruised by, turned in at the corner, and parked. An elderly man got out and dropped the tailgate.
“Claudia,” said the grandmotherly woman, “Brother Carver come with some more ice and sodas. We got to help him unload.”
“Coming right up.” Then, to Elle. “We’re getting ready for the people come through late afternoon. Some of those tourists looking for the blues clubs up in Clarksdale drive around down here sometime. We get some politicians now, too, with the election coming. You remember how all that was.”
Cici leaned in and she and Elle exchanged a quick kiss.
“See you later on,” Elle said. Cici walked over toward the pickup. She stopped, turned as if to say something, but didn’t, and went back to her friends.
“We can go,” said Elle.
“You know where it is?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess you know everyone in Rosedale.”
“Not really. Town’s grown. But some I do know, that’s for sure.” She breathed heavily. “That was good to see Cici. She was a good friend to me and Young Henry.”
“She’d changed that much you didn’t recognize her?”
“It’s been at least twenty years since I was here, except just driving through one other time. I just didn’t see it right away.”
“I guess she thought you looked about the same.”
“Except my bloodshot eyes and my face swollen up like the moon.”
Elle left the window down as she waved to the others at the tent. I began to ease down the street.
It didn’t take long to hit the northern edge of town and then it was just more cotton fields and thick stands of trees and the levee off toward the river.
I had barely gotten back up to sixty when Elle told me to slow down. We passed a few small clumps of houses and shacks, and then there was a small sign on the right that said “Small Engine Repair” by a little dirt lane.
“That’s it. That’s Memphis Place.”
“I guess they were thinking big.”
She flicked a sharp look my way. “Just drive up slowly so I can see the numbers.” Three clapboard houses and a big double-wide lined one side of the lane, punctuated at the end by a clap
board shed with a tractor inside. Off to the other side was a half-acre lot with a ranch-style brick house dead center under a grove of oaks. Almost like in the suburbs, if there were such a thing in the Delta.
“That’s it.”
I turned into the gravel driveway. At one side a black mailbox stood like a sentry, held up by a long silver stretch of industrial pipe. Atop the box a stylized black and red rooster was fashioned out of metal.
I stopped the Explorer in front of the house. The front door was bright yellow.
“Are you sure about this?”
“This is the place.”
“You see anyone home?”
“There’s a car over there.”
“So you just want to go up and knock.”
“You have another idea?”
“No, that’s pretty much it.”
“Wait here.”
She got out. She checked herself in the side mirror but I knew she didn’t really care, or felt that there was only so much she could do. She took off her sunglasses, which I thought was a good idea since wearing shades to meet people you haven’t seen in over a decade to ask them for a place to hide out from trained killers probably isn’t the best move.
She went to the door and knocked.
Nothing.
She knocked again. Nothing. She was turning to leave when the door opened. The small child who peeped around the edge seemed surprised. Whoever he thought he would find, it wasn’t the woman he beheld. But who was she? Almost at once came a muffled shout from inside, followed by the appearance of a very thin woman in a blue T-shirt and jeans, holding a baby clad only in a diaper.
Elle stepped back a couple of feet.
“Artula Johnson? Is that you?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Tula? It’s me. Elle. Elle Meridian. Ellie.”
The woman with the baby looked Elle over, in detail, and then opened the door wider and came outside. The boy, maybe three or four, scurried out, too, more curious than ever.
“It is you, I swear.”
Elle came forward and they attempted a hug around the children.
“I tried to call but the number was disconnected.”
“I changed it a while back. Good lord, girl, oh my good lord. It is you. Now come on in, now. We got bad mosquitoes here.”
They went inside and the door closed.
In a minute or two, it opened again and Artula waved me inside.
10
The house was more spacious than it looked from the outside: four bedrooms, living room with conversation pit and fireplace, kitchen with all the accoutrements, wall-to-wall beige carpet throughout. Artula was doing well.
Elle introduced me as a friend from New Orleans. Artula took my hand and said the girl in her arms was Vanessa, now thirteen months. The boy was Byron Jr., but everyone just called him Junior. Elle hugged the boy and cooed over Vanessa and then Junior went back to a cartoon show on a big Sony TV at the far side of the living room. We followed Artula to the conversation pit and sat on an L-shaped, plaid fabric couch. Artula put her daughter into a portable playpen and settled into a leather Lazy-Boy.
She asked us if we wanted anything to drink but we both said no, that we had stopped at a joint back in Cleveland. Artula said she knew the place and it was good, but she hadn’t been there in a while, that she didn’t get out that often these days.
She and Elle made small talk about the past, but it was pretty obvious Artula wasn’t as well as she let on. She got to it right away, keeping her voice low so Junior wouldn’t hear. Cancer of the kidneys, she said. For about a year. Maybe in remission but the doctors couldn’t be sure. Elle apologized for not knowing. Artula said she hadn’t really told a lot of people, even family.
“How is Byron taking it? Here I am in your house and I forgot to even ask where he is. Is he out of town?”
Artula looked away. “I thought maybe you knew. He passed, back before Vanessa was born.”
Elle’s face had lost most of its puffiness, but fell again, in part because of the news and in part because I think she was shamed at knowing so little about someone with whom she had been close as a girl.
“It was an accident, over by the port. He fell off a construction beam he was checking out because they thought it had a crack. Byron was what they call a project manager. A black man in charge of all those white folks.” To me: “He had an engineering degree.” Back to Elle: “His head hit the dock, and he dropped into the river. It was two days before his body washed up. It was pretty bad.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Elle.
I nodded but you can’t say anything meaningful to that kind of news as a stranger. I looked over at the TV. Junior was watching Lion King.
“We had a small service here but he was buried up in Blytheville, where he had come up.”
“And you found out about the cancer after all that?”
“Can you believe?”
“It doesn’t rain but it storms.”
“Amen to that.”
Artula glanced toward her children. “I think your parents both passed right about the same time didn’t they?”
Elle leaned in to her cousin. “They did. They sure did. But, Tula, you’re still here.”
“Thing is, we’re pretty okay other than that,” Artula said, catching Elle’s head-to-toe inspection, shrugging. “B. had the insurance with Conocor, and I’m still on his health policy another two years.” She looked off quickly. “After that we’ll have to see. Of course Mama would take care of—” She glanced at the children. “She lives down in Mobile but that would be okay. You know, if it comes to that. Anyway, we may need to be closer to a big hospital than we are here.”
Elle took Artula’s hand. “They have a lot of new medicine now. It’s not like it used to be.”
“I know. The doctor says if I make it three years I’ll die an old lady.”
They both laughed.
“You’re so strong, Tula. You’ve always been.”
Vanessa started fussing and Artula walked over to give her a juice bottle.
“Well, never a dull moment,” she said, coming back to the couch. “But, girl, you haven’t said, what brings you here to this old puddle in the road? With that face?”
Elle ran her fingers through her hair self-consciously, until her cousin reached over and smoothed her cheek the way you would a child’s. “Girl, you are still about the most beautiful thing in this whole state.”
Elle thanked her, glanced at me. I shrugged as if to say, why not tell her?
For the next ten minutes, she did. But only about Terrell’s death and the memorial service. Nothing about Witch Dance and Trey. Later, Elle told me it wasn’t about lack of trust, but not wanting to add to Artula’s load.
“Jack, you must think we a couple of freaks,” Artula said, lightly stroking Elle’s cheek.
“Nothing like that.”
“He’s been solid,” Elle said.
Artula patted her cousin on the shoulder and excused herself to make a sandwich plate for Junior and something for Vanessa.
Elle and I used the time to bring in our things from the Explorer. I decided to leave the weapons. Covering them again with the tarp, I had the flash of a view from on high, something looking down on me doing what I was doing. I reached back in for the Colt and pushed it into my duffel. You never know.
“We can only stay tonight,” Elle said, as we walked back to the house.
I made a quick visual recon. “She’s glad to see you.”
“Yeah. Better late . . . I guess.”
We stowed our things in the spare bedroom. I offered to take the couch but Elle said for me to use the bed; she wanted to stay up and talk to her cousin after the children went to sleep.
I had a beer and watched CNN while Elle and Artula gave Vanessa a bath so she
’d be clean for church in the morning and put her to bed and then got Junior showered and settled in for the night. Not all that much had happened in the world in the past few days that I could tell, at least from the TV. Back in New Orleans, before all this, I kept up with events as part of my job; odd how unimportant and distant it all seemed.
When Elle and Artula had finished with the kids, they came out and we talked a little about the Big Easy. Artula had been there with her husband. They had splurged at Commander’s Palace. She said B. loved her cooking best, though. I had another beer, while they started their catch-up, and about ten I realized I was yawning.
I went to the bedroom, but when my head hit the pillow, my mind came alive. I was back at Witch Dance, and goatee guy was on the ground in front of me. I could hear Elle and Artula talking like teenagers. Finally I didn’t know anything until the sun woke me.
Artula was in the kitchen, getting breakfast for Vanessa. The coffee was brewed, and she’d set out mugs for her guests. I filled mine while Artula fussed over the baby. It was probably the first time in far too long that a man had been here in the morning.
Elle shuffled in about the time I was getting a refill. She wore an old softball jersey and baggy shorts. Her face looked quiet again; the sleep had helped even though I think they had been up late. Elle hugged Artula and got coffee. After a sip, she leaned down to kiss Vanessa, then did the same to me, on the cheek.
I opened the sliding glass door leading to the back yard and strolled out onto the wooden deck. The fenced yard must have been fifty yards deep, freshly mowed and surrounded by trees. The air was unusually cool from yesterday’s storms. I let the Delta sink in around me. The bugs weren’t all that bad, although the cans of spray and mosquito coils on the edge of the deck indicated normality was otherwise.
