Harvey, the cook from Nap’s Corner, grasped the tip of Bonita’s fingers in his wide black hands. Bonita still had a cast on her arm and a patch to cover the damaged eye. The good eye was covered red from crying. As Harvey whispered into her ear, Bonita nodded and bit her lip. The woman who was introduced as Harvey’s wife was much louder. When she leaned down, her wide black hat touched the edge of Bonita’s hair.
“Baby doll, you remember me? Sister Delores. I came in last week to pick up that smoked turkey. Well now, if you need us, you call. You hear what I’m saying? Me and Harvey will come sit with you, we’ll pray with you, we’ll even cry with you if need be.”
Bonita used her good hand to unfurl a tissue and dabbed the exposed eye. If Bonita was touched by the appearance of the black couple, Alvin sure wasn’t. He squinted at Harvey and Sister Delores the whole time they were in the room. A scowl that seemed more eerie than the makeup that covered Johnny.
After the funeral I told Nana what had happened at the junkyard and how Beau carried on. “Well, you just let him be. If he wants to talk about it, he will. Otherwise just keep quiet about Johnny. People handle grief in all sorts of different ways,” she said.
Back at school, Beau ignored all the stares and dodged any questions about Christmas break. In class he even asked a couple of questions about the lesson on Seminole Indians.
After class, I was stuffing my book bag when I saw Miss Travick lean down and wrap her arm around Beau. “Are you feeling better? You know I’m here if you ever want to talk.” Ivory beads from her long necklace swirled within inches of Beau’s neck. He nodded and smiled wider than ever.
“Come on, slow poke,” he called out to me.
While we walked down the sidewalk, Miss Travick stood at the door watching us. I considered turning around and telling her about my mama’s made-up death. She would wrap her arms around me, and the necklace would tickle my skin. Her butterscotch scent would rub off on my clothes, and everybody would know that she had hugged me. But fearing that a moment of affection might turn into a full-blown case of pity, I decided to follow Nana’s advice and keep my mouth shut about grief.
Nana continued to pick us up from school long after Johnny was buried and the cleaned casserole dishes had been returned. Bonita not only didn’t want to talk about Johnny; she didn’t want to talk period. She lay in bed most days and kept the bottle of painkillers closer than a baby with a pacifier. While Nana cleaned the house and washed clothes, she always kept Bonita’s bedroom door shut. Making up a question to ask Nana, I ran down the hall just before the door closed. Through the crack I saw twisted sheets on the bed and a matted mass of red hair on Bonita’s head.
“Harvey made spoon bread today. Said he sure wanted to make sure you boys got some,” Nana said as we pulled up to Nap’s Corner. Tucked on the edge of a clump of oak trees and a bend in the river, the restaurant lived up to its name. It was a flat-top building with wooden pilings that formed a makeshift boat ramp designed to cater to hungry fishermen. Faded red paint matched the rust that covered the front-door awning. Spanish moss from low-hanging trees fanned across the ventilation pipes. As soon as we got out of the car, the smell of fried fish caused my mouth to convince me the place was a five-star restaurant.
“All right, now,” Harvey called out from behind the counter. He was wearing yellow plastic gloves as he shucked oysters.
A woman with frosted hair and pink eye shadow smiled real big. “Hey, girl,” she said and flipped the dishrag at Nana. Her voice went down a few levels when she looked at Beau and Josh and asked, “How y’all been getting along?”
“Fine,” Beau said and shrugged his shoulders. “I hear y’all got some spoon bread today.”
“Harvey made a batch just for you.” She turned to look at me.
“And honey, I know who you are. You’re all this girl talks about.”
Nana played with my shirt collar. “Yeah, Brandon, this is Karen.”
“I work the lunch shift with your granny,” Karen said. “And I tell you what, there haven’t been any cuter men that walked through that door today than the three I’m standing here looking at.”
“You better watch what you say,” the man behind Karen said.
When she turned around, the badge was the first thing I saw. He looked seven feet tall and was holding a felt hat with the words “Florida Highway Patrol” etched on a gold pin. I felt Nana’s grip grow tighter on my shoulder. Words from the script circled my mind, and I wondered if Nana would help guide me by the pressure of her fingers. The image of the man from TV flashed through my mind. A ventriloquist Poppy had called him, and the doll that sat on the man’s lap and opened and closed his mouth was the dummy.
“Parker Townes, you better stop,” Karen said. “Hey, have you met Pauline before?”
“I don’t think so,” the officer said. His smile revealed long pointy teeth, and the way Nana gripped my shoulder as he approached she must’ve thought for sure that he would bite.
“How do you do,” the man said with a nod.
She cleared her throat. “Hello.”
“Pauline works the lunch shift three days a week,” Karen said.
“This here is her grandson, Brandon.”
Parker leaned down and looked right into my eyes. At first my eyes darted away from looking into the blue circles, but fearing that he’d think I had something to hide, I forced myself to stare back. His eyes pierced through me, and I hoped that he could not see all the way inside my heart. The same one that was running wide open.
I only breathed again when he turned to Beau and Josh. As Beau repeated the same old lies that everything was fine at his house and that his mama was doing better, I felt Nana ease her grip.
“Parker, order’s up,” Harvey called out from the kitchen. Opened oysters and a lemon wedge filled the plastic container on the snack bar.
“That Parker Townes is my weekly eye candy. Too bad you’re not working when he comes in,” Karen said in a stage whisper.
“Does he live around here?” Nana asked.
“Oh yeah. Just the other side of the post office. You know his wife up and quit him. Couldn’t handle little-town life. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, I said. I’m just tickled that he’s here, you know to keep crime outta town.”
Sweat gathered around the edges of Harvey’s gray hair. His skin glistened like well-oiled mahogany. “Here you go, boys,” he said. Beau grabbed the bag that had started to stain from the grease inside. Josh had already reached inside and started eating before I could get to it.
Harvey cut his eyes towards Nana. “Me and my wife want to know, how’s Bonita really?”
Nana stuck out her lips and shook her head.
“You tell her me and Sister Delores gonna be by real soon.”
Before we could get out of the door, the patrolman called out to us. “Oh, and Pauline…”
Nana gripped the door handle, and the neon sign that advertised fresh seafood buzzed overhead.
The patrolman smiled and pointed with a tiny fork. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”
Ten
It was Beau’s idea to make the bag swing for Josh. Filling an empty oyster sack with dirt, I never let on that I used to have a tire swing back in North Carolina and fought the image of Mary Madonna and Mac now swinging on it. Josh’s bag swing would be even better. Like that guidance counselor with the pitiful smile had told me, sometimes the past is better left buried.
We heard the music from the red Impala before we saw the car. Holding the edges of the coarse bag, I looked up at the same time Beau did. Organ music and drums mixed with the loud voice of a woman singer. The music made the vehicle seem like a mini version of the juke joint that fed our campground songs late at night.
“Hey, babies,” Sister Delores tried to shout. Her words garbled with the singer’s moaning. When the car engine was turned off, the music disappeared, but she sat there a moment longer and smiled.
“Umm, I’m cra
zy about that Mahalia Jackson.”
Beau lodged the shovel deeper. “Who’s she?”
Sister Delores struggled to get out of the car and paused just as her dress rolled up to reveal knee-high stockings. “Who’s she? Only the best gospel singer in the entire United States of the whole America. Who’s she? Who’s she?” By the time she got of the car, she was laughing even harder. Tight black curls bounced around a face the color of peanut butter.
“Hey, I remember you,” Beau said. “You’re Harvey’s wife.”
“You mean Harvey’s my husband.” She handed us grocery bags and talked all at the same time. Talked about the weather, the new workers hired down at the marina, and how lost everybody was at Nap’s Corner without Bonita.
Double-armed with groceries, Beau squinted at her. “I hope these ain’t for us.”
She tilted her head back until a long nose hair was visible. “Then what you want me to do? Leave ’em out here and let the seagulls tear into them?”
“We don’t take handouts,” Beau said.
“Boy, get yourself into that house before the cream melts and you make me go back to the store.” It only took one look at her raised eyebrow before Beau started walking towards the porch. “You tickle me acting all grown like you’re a little man or something.”
Inside the house Sister Delores took on the actions of an oversized flea. She jumped from the kitchen sink to the mop and then started on the bathroom. Part of me was aggravated at her for driving in with her loud music and trying to take Nana’s place as house manager.
When she began running water in the tub, the pipes let out a holler that vibrated the side of the house. Bonita’s door creaked open, and she stuck half of her head out. Her eye was padded with puffy skin, but the front of her hair stood at attention. “What’s all that racket?”
Beau pointed towards the bathroom. Sister Delores’s wide behind stared back at us as she leaned over the tub pouring cleanser and singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Clutching the top of Johnny’s work shirt, which had become her uniform, Bonita eased into the hallway. “Excuse me.”
The sound of bristles stripping away grime provided a rhythm for Sister Delores’s song. “Excuse me,” Bonita said louder.
“Oh, hey baby. I didn’t see you standing there. Excuse me for not getting up. This knee is giving me fits. Doctor said I need to loose weight, but when your husband is a cook, there ain’t no way to put down that fork. You hear me now?”
Bonita massaged her eyes. “I’m sorry. Who are…”
“Baby, you know me. Sister Delores. Harvey’s wife. I picked up that smoked turkey down at the restaurant right before Christmas…Well, anyway, I been planning to come by for some time, but with this old knee acting up and everything.” She turned back to the tub and scrubbed faster. “You just get yourself back in that prison. We’re managing just fine.”
Bonita sighed in protest, but by then Sister Delores was back singing.
“Mama, you ought to see the kitchen,” Beau said. “So clean we could eat supper off the floor if we wanted to.”
“She brought groceries too,” Josh added.
Bonita’s eyes glassed over even more with the details. She took three steps and then rested her head against the wall, tilting a picture of two men standing on a boat. Leaning against the flowered wallpaper, she continued towards the kitchen and rubbed the place on the shirt where Johnny’s name was stitched across the pocket. She looked down at the kitchen floor. Black-and-white tile glistened back at her. The gold-colored refrigerator tucked in the corner now seemed as good as new. She reached out like she might touch it, but stopped halfway there. We gathered around like a seawall ready to catch a crashing wave. I held my breath until my ears filled with a ringing noise. But then just as slow as she had walked out, Bonita turned and drifted back behind the bedroom door.
“Yes,” Beau said, with his fist clinched in victory. “In the kitchen today. Out in the living room tomorrow.”
Outside, we had finished filling the bag of sand by the time Sister Delores was leaving. She clutched a shiny black purse and watched as we struggled to lift the bag up to the rope that dangled from the tree.
“You boys stop that before you tear up your insides.” She reached down and ran her stumpy fingers across the sack. “So you’re fixing a bag swing, huh? I remember when my daddy fixed me a bag swing for my birthday one year. All us kids had the best time on that thing. My brother had a pit bull and that dog would clamp her teeth a hold of that swing and wouldn’t let go for nothing. Yes sir, we had fun on that swing.” She got into the car and leaned out the opened window. “Harvey and a man from my church will be out tomorrow to fix that swing for y’all. I’ll see to it. A boy just needs to be a boy.”
“What kinda church you go to?” Beau asked.
“God’s Hospital. Right over yonder on Magnolia Street. And little man, I don’t go to it. I’m the pastor.”
“Pastor? You’re a woman.”
Sister Delores coiled back and opened her mouth. “And I didn’t hear God checking in with you, little man, before he called me to preach. I sure did not. If I ain’t the pastor, then why am I called Sister Delores?”
Fearing that she might really be mad, I searched my mind for a different topic. “What about that dog? The one that swung on the bag with its teeth?”
Cranking the car, Sister Delores looked straight ahead at the windshield dusted in sea salt. Organ music swelled while the singer’s voice moaned in a way that dug up feelings in a hollowed-out place inside of me.
“Oh, her. Some man shot her one day. Shot her swinging right on that bag.”
“Why’d he do that for?” Josh asked.
“Don’t you never mind about why. Y’all don’t be studying about that old dog. You hear me? Harvey’s gonna fix that swing for you. Y’all just laugh and cut up and be sweet boys. That goes for you too, little man.” With a point at Beau she drove away, leaving exhaust smoke and a distant crackle of music that stayed in my ears long after the car had disappeared.
Poppy worked longer and longer hours until it got to where the crickets had already started chirping by the time he opened the door. His shoulders would hunch over, and he’d remove the cap with the marina logo to reveal matted hair. Whenever Nana would complain about him overdoing it, he’d say “Time and a half beats tired bones any day.” A restaurant-sized pickle jar served as their official bank. Locking the door, Nana would count the money every Friday right before we called Uncle Cecil.
One day while Poppy was working overtime, Nana and me called Uncle Cecil on our own. It was the first time I got to speak to him.
The February wind was brisk, and the man who owned the station stayed inside most of the time. The burnt orange sign that advertised an oil change swung back and forth to the beat of the wind.
“Hey, boy,” Uncle Cecil said.
I gripped the phone receiver tighter against my ear. The whining sound of trapped wind from the nearby bathroom tried to distract me. Words to all the questions I had planned to ask stayed locked in my throat. My mind would not let me speak anything other than small chatter saved for bored old ladies. “No, sir, it’s not real sunny today. The wind is all over the place.”
Questions about my mama edged closer to my lips. I wanted to blurt it all out. Did you let her eat Christmas dinner with you? Was she still in town? But I just stood there with one hand buried in my pants pocket and the other growing numb holding a line to the past.
While Nana talked about the amount of money she was going to send him for the mortgage payment, I slid farther away towards the gas station door. Inside, the old man leaned against the counter and acknowledged me with a motion of his chin. Pressed against the concrete wall, I was free from the cutting wind but felt the burn of being Sophie Willard’s son all over again. The ghost of yesterday slapped me around harder than the wind flapped the metal sign by the pumps.
The clanging sound of a cowbell tied to the gas-stat
ion door made me flinch. “Lord have mercy, it’s cold out here,” Harvey said as he zipped the jacket higher towards his chin. A black poncho draped Sister Delores, and a zebra-print hat was pulled down low over her ears. “Don’t be crying to me. I tol’ you to wear a heavy coat. Your blood pressure liable to fall slap out from this cold, and you without a decent coat.”
I eased by the trash can and watched as Harvey raced to his truck. Sister Delores moved slower and kept flailing her arms under the black material. When her pocketbook dropped to the ground, she leaned down and saw me. “Hey, here. What you doing hanging out with trash?” She pointed to the orange trash barrel and laughed.
Her hand was light when she touched the top of my head. The musty smell of cornmeal clung to the poncho. “What you doing out here freezing?”
I pointed to the corner of the building. “Nana’s talking to Uncle Cecil. He’s all the way up in North Carolina.” By the way the wrinkle above her nose deepened, I was afraid I’d said too much.
“North Carolina? Oh no, so far from home. I hope he can get down here close to family. A man needs his people.”
I smiled and got onto myself for saying too much.
She pulled the hat down farther. “Listen, baby. Your friend’s been coming to my church. Did he tell you?”
“You mean Beau?”
“That’s the one. But I call him little man on account of how he tries to act so grown. Anyway, I was just standing here wondering if you’d like to come. We’re having homecoming this Sunday, and I promise you you’ll go home fed.”
“Uhh…well, I need to ask Nana.” The vision of Nana walking down the beach by herself every Sunday morning came to mind. The part of her that still hadn’t found its way down to Florida.
“Where she at, round here on this side?” Sister Delores pointed towards the bathrooms.
Sliding along the cold block wall, I eased my head around the corner. The wind whipped until my eyes watered, but I still made out the shock on Nana’s face.
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