“Maybe you could have a side business,” Delia suggested, trying to sound optimistic. “Will Jackson’s got one. Luella said they saved up six hundred and twenty-two dollars from him buying and selling used stuff.”
“It ain’t all used,” Benjamin replied. “A lot of that stuff Will sells is stolen. He buys stuff what supposedly fell off a truck, pays a dime on the dollar, then overcharges folks for things they gotta have. That what you’re wanting me to do?”
Delia sighed. “I guess not.” Her words were weary and thin as a piece of parchment.
Benjamin stretched his arm across the table and covered Delia’s hand with his. “Just ’cause we ain’t got money don’t mean Isaac can’t go to college. He’s just got to work a whole lot harder.”
“Work harder?”
Benjamin nodded. “If Isaac got the best grades in his class when he finishes up high school, it might be a college will leave him go for free.”
“Free?”
Benjamin nodded. “When I was in the army, I knew a pilot what did it.”
“A white man?”
“Unh-unh.” Benjamin shook his head. “Colored fella.”
“Get out,” Delia said, laughing.
Benjamin went on to explain how a scholarship worked.
“Isaac’s smart enough,” he said, “but he ain’t real dedicated.”
“Well, he’ll get dedicated!”
After that single conversation, Delia went from seeing Isaac as a boy to thinking of him as a man getting ready for college. Once school started there was no more visiting with Luella and Jerome. As soon as Isaac came in from school, Delia sat him at the kitchen table and made him start studying.
While she was mixing up a corn pudding or peeling a pile of potatoes she’d call out questions like how much is nine times nine or who was America’s sixteenth president. After two weeks of studying and any number of wrong answers, Delia told Benjamin to ask around Bakerstown and find some mending or ironing jobs he could bring home for her to do.
That year there was little time for anything other than working. Delia ironed and mended the baskets of clothes Benjamin brought home, and he began taking on more and more jobs. He’d leave the house long before dawn and wouldn’t return until well after dark. Some nights he’d come home too tired to eat supper or even peel the sweat-stained clothes from his body.
Isaac’s sole responsibility was studying.
As Delia stood at the ironing board pressing wrinkles from the shirt of a white man she’d never met, she continued to call out the questions and little by little Isaac began to get more of the answers right.
“That’s good,” she’d say, then move on to arithmetic or some other subject. Every session ended with the same statement.
“I want an A on every one of those test papers,” Delia would warn.
When the balmy days of April finally rolled around, Isaac complained about not having time enough for playing.
“There’ll be plenty of time for playing when you’re done with college,” Delia said.
“That’s years off,” Isaac moaned. “You saying I ain’t never gonna have no fun ’til then?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” Delia answered. “If you was to get straight a’s on your next report card, I’d be willing to take you for a day of visiting with Jerome.”
“Straight a’s?” Isaac repeated, making such a feat sound impossible.
Delia nodded. “I know you ain’t thinking it now, but someday you’re gonna be mighty glad I pushed you into studying for college.” She gave a wistful sigh and said, “I was gonna go to college, but then I met your daddy and got married.”
As much as she loved Benjamin Delia couldn’t help but wonder: if she’d been a bit more patient and gone to college as her daddy wanted, would she still be living in Grinder’s Corner? If she closed her eyes, Delia could envision the pathway of her life. She had come to a fork in the road and taken one pathway without ever knowing what was down the other. Rushing blindly ahead without weighing one side against the other was the way of youth, and she was determined that Isaac would not make such a foolish mistake.
Delia
When I listen to myself telling Isaac how important it is for him to go to college, I can hear my daddy’s voice saying that exact same thing to me. When folks is young, you don’t pay no never-mind to stuff like that. Now the weather’s turned warm, the only thing Isaac wants to think about is playing.
That’s fine ’n dandy if you’re not ever leaving Grinder’s Corner. But living here’s a hard life. It’s a lot of making do and doing without. Isaac’s way smarter than Jerome, and he don’t have to settle for this life. If he puts his brain to work and studies real hard, he can go off to college and maybe be a doctor or preacher. ’Course, looking back on some of the things Daddy did I’m none too respectful of preachers, but for most folks a preacher’s just one step down from God.
I’ve got no problem with doing the sewing ’n mending Benjamin brings home. I figure every extra dollar puts Isaac that much closer to college. White folks pay good money for work they could be doing themselves, and long as I don’t have to go into Bakerstown I’m okay with doing it.
Money is money, and the only color it’s got is green.
The Last Perfect Day
On the last day of school Isaac came home glowing like a stoplight.
“I done it,” he said and handed Delia the report card with a line of a’s stacked one on top of the other.
Delia smiled and hugged her arms around the boy. For a brief moment she could already envision him walking through the front door of Morehouse College.
“I sure am proud of you,” she said.
“Good.” Isaac grinned. “Now can we go visit Jerome?”
Delia nodded. “Soon as I finish up this mending.”
“You said—”
“I know what I said,” Delia replied.
Although Delia had suggested that it would take no more than a day or two to finish mending the things Benjamin brought home, it took the better part of three days and on the fourth day it was pouring rain, which meant the visit had to again be postponed.
When Isaac stood on the front porch looking out at the downpour, Delia walked out and stood beside him.
“Woo-wee,” she said. “A day like this ain’t good for much but maybe reading.”
“Don’t I get no vacation?” he replied despondently.
“’Course you do,” she answered. “Those books I got you ain’t for studying, they’re for fun reading.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t in the mood for fun reading. I’m in the mood for ball playing.”
“You say that ’cause you never learned to love reading. When I was a girl I could sit and read for hours. Rainy days I’d be sitting in the chair and—”
Isaac gave an exasperated sigh, turned, and went back into the house.
With first one delay and then the other, it was eight days before they finally got to go for the visit. Benjamin was barely out of the house when Delia pulled on her pink flowered dress and painted her mouth to match. She woke Isaac and told him to hurry up if he wanted to go see Jerome.
They started out early Wednesday morning and arrived at the Jackson place well before ten. Jerome was first to spot Isaac coming down the road. He let out a whoop and holler that brought Luella running from the house.
“Land sakes,” she said, hugging Delia to her chest. “Where you been keeping yourself?”
“I mostly been helping Isaac with his lessons,” Delia replied, saying nothing about the mending and ironing she’d been doing.
“Well, I sure as the devil missed seeing you,” Luella laughed.
Delia smiled. “Me too.”
The day was as perfect as any Delia had ever known with the sun warm on her back, the air fragrant with the scent of spring jasmine, and the sound of Isaac’s laughter crackling with happiness. Delia creaked back and forth in the rocker and sipped her sweet tea.
“Times like
this is good,” she said. “I’d soon as not sit here forever.”
“Ain’t nothing forever.” Luella laughed. “Best you can do is be remembering these good times and forgetting hard times. Folks what can’t turn their back on hard times got a heavy load to carry.”
“Ain’t that the God’s honest truth,” Delia replied.
The sun was setting when Delia first thought of leaving, and still she stayed a bit longer. The day had been like a slice of blueberry pie; the sweetness of it made her hunger for more.
“I just can’t get myself moving,” she said.
“Y’all’s welcome to stay,” Luella replied. “It ain’t fancy, but we can make do.”
Delia shook her head. “I’ve got to get home. Benjamin’d be worried to death if we was gone.” She stood and called out for Isaac. “Time for us to be going.”
Isaac crumpled his face into a frown. “I ain’t done playing.”
“You ain’t never gonna be done playing,” Delia said, “but we still got to be getting home.”
“If you is dead set on going,” Luella said, “leave Isaac stay. Come get him tomorrow, and we’ll have ourselves another fine day of visiting.”
“That sure enough sounds sweet,” Delia replied, “but Isaac’s got reading to do.” She went on to explain how Isaac was going to need a scholarship to go to college.
“Benjamin don’t have no side business, and seven dollars is all the savings we got,” she said.
When they finally left the tall pines were black silhouettes against a sky that was already turning dusky.
“Y’all come back real soon,” Luella called as they disappeared down the road.
Delia turned and waved one last time.
Cross Corner Road
Sally Garrett didn’t leave Luke because he was a terrible husband and a poor provider. She left him because he was a mean drunk. After three or four drinks the hatred in him came to a boil, and he turned uglier than a mean-assed bear.
When Luke came home smelling of whiskey on Tuesday night, Sally knew she was in for it. He started picking at her about being fat and ugly, then moved on to poking her in the stomach and laughing at how the fat wobbled.
“I don’t have to put up with this,” Sally said and turned toward the bedroom.
That’s when Luke whirled her around, grabbed the front of her dress, and ripped it wide open.
“Look at them ugly titties,” he laughed. “Them is the ugliest titties I ever did see!”
At that point Sally had taken all the insults she could stand.
“I may be fat and ugly,” she said, “but at least I ain’t a white trash drunk—”
She was going to say more, but Luke slammed his fist into her face.
By the time he finally passed out, the right side of her face was puffed out like a cantaloupe and she had a black eye and a broken front tooth.
Once Luke was stretched out on the sofa dead to the world, Sally pulled the cardboard suitcase from the back of the closet and packed the things she needed. In the black of night she walked from the back hill cutoff to Cross Corner Road and then all the way into town. It was a twenty-three-mile walk, most of it through Grinder’s Corner where the colored families lived, but Sally didn’t care. Enough was enough.
When the early morning bus left Bakerstown headed for Baltimore, Maryland, Sally was on it.
Luke didn’t open his eyes until nearly noon, and when he did he started yelling for Sally to bring him a cold beer.
“Hey, stupid! You deaf or something?”
Once the room came into focus, he scrabbled off the sofa and went in search of her. That’s when he saw the emptied out closet. There was no note, no indication of where she’d gone.
With no other way to vent his anger, Luke kicked the closet door with such fury it came loose from its hinges. When it fell to the floor, he stomped it until the wood split in half. After giving the broken door one last kick, he headed into the kitchen and pulled a lukewarm beer from an icebox that didn’t have a sliver of ice left in it.
Luke drained a long swallow and spit it out. “Warm piss,” he grumbled. Still red-eyed and smelling of whiskey, he got into his truck and headed for town.
His first stop was the Good Times Tavern where he had three cold beers to clear his head. Then he went looking for Sally.
Ezra Green, the bus station clerk who’d sold Sally her ticket, had seen the black eye and he didn’t have to ask questions to know where she’d gotten it. When Luke swaggered into the station hollering about how he was gonna find Sally and teach her nobody shits on Luke Garrett and gets away with it, Ezra said Sally had boarded a bus headed for Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“Damn that woman,” Luke replied. Then he staggered out the door, across the street, and back to the Good Times Tavern.
Luke climbed onto a barstool and ordered a boilermaker whiskey to ease the pain of Sally leaving and then he washed it down with a beer chaser to cool the burn in his throat.
“Ungrateful bitch,” he told Alvin, the bartender. “Run off after all I done for her.”
All afternoon Luke sat there, drinking boilermakers, smoking fat cigars, and cussing Sally for leaving. As soon as he’d downed one glass, he’d order another.
When it began to look as if Luke was going to topple off the stool, Alvin suggested he go home and see if maybe Sally hadn’t returned.
“You deaf?” Luke answered. “I done told you she went to Albuquerque.”
Alvin had seen a lot of drunks come and go, and the mean ones were the worst. You couldn’t argue with them; the best you could do was get them out the door and send them on their way.
“Maybe she changed her mind,” he said. “Got off at the next stop and came back home.”
“It ain’t likely,” Luke replied. “She’s spiteful through and through.”
Alvin tried a dozen different ploys to get him to leave, but Luke just sat there and continued to order boilermakers one after the other. Nearly two times Luke’s size, Alvin could have picked Luke up and set him out on the street and he came close to doing it several times, but mean drunks almost always find a way of retaliation. Luke was well known as a trouble-maker, and there was no way of knowing what he’d do. Alvin waited, hoping sooner or later Luke would pass out.
It never happened. Luke just went from being belligerent and mean to being remorseful. He plopped his head down on the bar and moaned so loudly Alvin had to turn the jukebox music to maximum just to drown out the noise of his sobbing.
It was after dark when Luke finally staggered out of the bar and climbed back into his truck.
~ ~ ~
Leaving Luella’s as late as she had, Delia underestimated the amount of time it would take for the five-mile walk home. Nighttime walking was slower, and there were places where the darkness tricked you into thinking the road turned one way or another. When that happened, she and Isaac would walk twenty or thirty yards then find themselves tangled in a briar patch and have to turn back.
She was already regretting her mistake when she heard a crack of thunder in the distance. Delia wasn’t afraid of getting wet, but ever since that trek home from Bessie’s house she’d been harboring a fear of lightning. If it could take down a huge long leaf pine, she could only imagine what it would do to a person.
“Let’s walk faster,” she told Isaac.
The rain started minutes later. A storm came roaring in and dumped three or four inches of water on the ground in less than thirty minutes. They were already sloshing through the mud when they heard the sound of a truck coming up behind them.
Delia turned, saw what she thought was Benjamin’s truck, and stepped into the road to wave him down. She was waving her right arm in the air when the headlights came at her.
“Mama!” Isaac screamed and moved to reach for her.
Tears and a veil of self-pity were already clouding Luke Garrett’s eyes when the downpour started. With the flood of rain washing across his windshield he could see no more than two
or three feet in front of him, and to be truthful he wasn’t expecting someone to be standing in the middle of a road as lonely as Cross Corner.
He heard the first thump when the boy bounced off the side of his truck. The second thump came when a woman in a flowered dress came flying across the hood of his car. He skidded to a stop, stuck his head out the window, and looked back.
“Damn stupid niggers,” he grumbled. “They done busted up my headlight.”
He pushed down on the gas pedal and drove off.
The Search
Wednesday was a long day for Benjamin. He’d started early with cutting back a thicket of blackberry bushes threatening to take over Sadie Walter’s backyard. It had taken hours longer than he’d thought, so he was late getting to the Branson house.
Edwin Branson had no tolerance for tardiness, especially from coloreds who were hired to do a job.
“Least you could do is show up on time,” he told Benjamin. Then he claimed he was in the middle of dinner, and Benjamin would have to wait at the back door while he finished eating.
“I can’t see any reason to let my meal grow cold because of your tardiness,” he said.
Standing in the hot sun, Benjamin waited while Edwin Branson finished his dinner then sat back for a second cup of coffee and a bowl of peaches. Nearly an hour passed before he stepped out onto the back porch and showed Benjamin the two pine trees at the far end of his yard that were to be taken down and chopped into firewood.
“Be sure to dig up them stumps and get rid of them,” he said.
It was well into the supper hour when Benjamin finished the job, and he still had Claudia Monroe’s roof to repair. He was replacing a row of loose shingles when he heard the distant sound of thunder. Claudia also heard the thunder. She stepped outside and called up to Benjamin.
Passing Through Perfect Page 11
