If Sons, Then Heirs: A Novel

by Lorene Cary

  “My mother is his backup plan,” he said close, talking mouth on hers, nibble, talk, taste coffee, morning, wake-up call, go to sleep. “You’re mine.” He bent his knees behind her back to cradle her.

  Support. How could his mother have supported anyone early on if she was trying to kill herself? Why had Jack told Lillie alone? Why did they keep secrets? She lay back against Rayne’s thighs, hoisted herself up and eased herself down onto him. “There. Shhh. Don’t move.”

  “I gotta move.”

  Deeper. Open up some more.

  Rayne breathed in her yearning. Their wants had not been the same. Naturally. That’s the way of the world.

  Tonight they are.

  Tonight, Lillie agreed to keep him company as he rolled back toward his birth and beyond it to his great-great-grandmother Bett, whose pushing forward got her and Rome the soggy wash-land that nobody thought could be farmed, but they farmed it anyway; and past her to the Africans whom Selma talked about as if there had been just one black Adam and Eve who arrived and gave birth to their blessing and curses, whether or not deserved, because deserving is beside the point, but survival required. She held on to him as he turned into an estuary, a channel—she suggested it, after all: “Invite them in.” She held on to this big, solid man who built floors and ceilings and walls to give him the strength to become essence, a willing vessel, a swinging door that could open and close as he breathed. Her mother told her that there are more things in heaven and earth than we dream of.

  ———

  She feels it tonight. She will stay close to him.

  He falls asleep when he comes. A trapdoor opens down to a basement he hasn’t visited in a long time. Now he’ll know why.

  CHAPTER 28

  The men smoke, sip, and watch one another, soon to be initiated into a secret society. Some already belong. Some wonder. Some know.

  Fairlie Broadnax walks around the trees as if to evaluate them. He is as self-important as a terrier on a rat hunt. Chuff, chuff. Mitchell has lived next to King for years, watched his big, red, arrogant self planting, harvesting, storing up, draining, improving, rotating crops. King built a fence to keep Mitchell’s cows out of his corn. Some nerve. Mitchell wants Fairlie to fuck off tryin to boss everybody.

  ———

  Selma’s first thought on waking is of King. She chews a cracker that she left for herself on purpose on the table next to the bed. It helps a little. She counts the days from her last period. It’s too soon to tell for sure. She’s counted this far before plus five days, had this sicky feeling—then nothing. This time she’s sicky and hungry. Her nipples itch. She won’t say anything until she’s past the second missed cycle. Twenty-one and twenty-one plus five for the missed period will be forty-seven: exactly his age.

  She distracts herself from too much hoping by remembering the current mess. She wishes that there had been some way to get word to him, so he could be thinking what to do on the way home. She thinks of Amos and Mary in Philadelphia. Maybe they should just pack up and go bunk with them for a while. Hire out?

  She can hear his voice: Well, you know, BabyGirl, if we move, we lose.

  They’ve had trouble before. Soon after he married her, his dogs took after a white drifter who wandered into the tobacco shed. Folks in town went crazy, said it could have been any of them, got up a party to come stand outside the door and demand that he give up the dogs to them.

  He didn’t give his dogs over to anyone. But he did put them down. It almost killed him. Everyone adjusted, went on living, like they’d been doing together for years. Happened every ten years or so, he said. The scum bubbled up to the top; they skimmed some off and let the rest roil back into the pot. If he left, they’d lose it all. That was a given.

  After her chores, Selma begins to bake applesauce bread from the earliest of those lopsided apples on the Goat Hill ridge, so that she can take a loaf to that Broadnax family as soon as King gets home. Maybe he’ll want to go, too. She knows he hated the father, but he makes things work. He won’t sidestep whatever mess is coming. He’ll walk straight through it.

  ———

  At quarter to seven, Richard tells Big Tootch that he doesn’t like waiting for King to get back. He doesn’t like the feel of things, so he’ll take the mare mule overland on the back path to intercept King south of town and talk to him before he comes through.

  “I don’t want him to drive in here unprepared,” he says. “I want him to know about what happened on the Broadnax field before he gets in here.”

  “All right. Maybe I’ll check on Selma later.”

  “You go ahead. Kids be all right. Put Little Richard in charge, and tell ’em I’ll be back directly.”

  Jones is glad to hear from Big Tootch that Richard has gone ahead. Relieved, he leaves the house to chop cotton. Knowing that Selma has company and Richard is on the road, he stays only half on guard.

  ———

  King leaves Columbus earlier than he expected. He never sleeps well alone, so when he awakens early, he figures he might as well get going. He’s told Selma he’ll be back by eight. Closer to seven means he can pull a full morning before midday dinner, then catch a nap and get in a few more hours with Jones while it’s still light. He’ll leave the removal of the stumps until the next day, when he’s fresh. Then, too, he’ll need to hire someone to work with him the rest of this month. Jones is a trooper, but Junior, the 230-pound son he’s just given to the U.S. Army, was a workhorse.

  King has bought a crate of funny-named hybrid chicks for Selma. Folks in Columbus raved about disease resistance and heavy laying. Selma makes a nice piece of change with her egg-and-butter business. She’ll be surprised. And this will be a good start at some piggy-bank money for Bobo.

  He gives Bobo a chick to play with in the truck to keep him quiet. The boy has behaved as well as he ever did, flattered to be admired by the recruiters, shown off by Junior, petted by the military wives in evidence at the margins. In the truck, he plays with the chick and then asks for a story. Together they recount “That’s the Way of the World.” King gives him corn bread and jam that he paid the woman they stayed with to pack for them, then water out of one of the mason jars they brought for the purpose. The corn bread is not Selma’s and neither is the jam; even the water tastes rusty. They talk about their own sweet well back home. They stop by the woods so that the boy can pee into the ditch. It is still dark. He and the chick go to sleep.

  Except for the boy’s easy breathing, King feels very alone. Junior’s gratitude has been so thorough that King understands that his son will never return to the land. Neither of King’s children was a farmer, the others have died, and Selma, for all her nubile health and strength, has not brought one to term. King chews a little tobacco to help him stay awake. But in the dark truck cab, fatigue settles into him. Junior waved good-bye, and King’s heart sank. King does not allow himself to imagine Junior’s not coming back. He’ll come back from the war, King thinks, but not to this land. You had to admire the boy for trying so hard. For someone who didn’t really want to farm, he was a marvel: smart, steady, flexible, strong; he has played the role of the son a farmer prays for. King already misses his easy company.

  Just before dawn, King stops to relieve himself and wakes Bobo to make him go, too. He removes the chick, still alive, somehow, from the sleeping boy’s hand. He’ll tell Selma that these little chickens can survive any damn thing.

  It looks to him in the half-light as if he has only eleven chicks, not a dozen, after he’s replaced the one, but he will not take time by the side of the dark road to check. Instead, as he drives, the missing chick plays in his head idly, like the end of a joke his stepfather used to tell, but that never seemed funny to him as a child, perhaps because he knew only the punch line.

  —So I asked: What the hell happened to those chickens?

  —He told me: they flew the coop.

  Such a silly phrase. Chickens don’t. That’s why we call ’em chicken, he said, amusi
ng himself. He guesses that that was what was supposed to be funny.

  ———

  Mitchell knows Needham’s truck a ways off. When he sees it turn the bend, he drives his own truck into the middle of the road to block it.

  “Here he comes.”

  “Okay. We home.” Fairlie says it to no one in particular. He notices that Mitchell is trying to take the lead. That irks him, like everything else. With his own rope no less.

  King sees Mitchell’s truck in the road and takes in the scene. The boy is awake. Fairlie Broadnax striding up to Mitchell’s truck. Clementine, Potts, Strayhorn, the hateful ex-mayor James. James, Potts, and Mitchell, of course, came with the group who harassed King about the dogs ten years ago. That’s what they do. Broadnax is different. King slows the car just enough so that he can decide whether he has room to wheel it there or can reverse up the road out of their running distance and then spin around.

  He sees Greenie Nightingale, though, and hesitates. What is Greenie doing here? He thinks that maybe he’ll give Greenie one of the chicks after whatever this fracas will be. God knows Greenie doesn’t have a pot to piss in. At that moment, Pickerelle’s car drives up behind him. Fairlie is running toward him, Butch Broadnax next. They are unarmed.

  King throws open the passenger door, and in as firm and calm a voice as he can, says quietly to Bobo: “I want you to get out and run home. You know the way from here? Across the field, up the nanny goat hill. Run straight there. Tell Nana Selma I’ll be along.”

  “Can I take my chick?”

  “Not now. I want you to run. Go home. Fast.”

  Then he shouts in a bass that reverberates through Bobo’s body: “The boy’s goin home now!”

  The field freezes while he runs, afraid now, hearing King’s hard voice, clipped. This is not what King thought at first. He smells their fear and his own. Like hogs start to squeal when you take one out to slaughter. They know the difference.

  Go home. Fast. Go home. Fast. Go home. Fast. Go home. Fast. Go home. Fast.

  Maybe he’s too suspicious. Although any black man who’s not must be crazy. It makes him smile. While the men watch, King uses his position, leaned over toward the passenger door, to grab for his pistol in the glove box, but for the first time in years he has locked it, just for this trip, to make sure that the boy can’t get at it accidentally. Jesus. They are almost on him, excited, because it has happened so fast, because they weren’t ready yet, because the boy running out of the truck has sealed the deal.

  As they run to him, they say: We just wanna talk, Needham. Step out here and talk for a minute. Needham? They believe themselves.

  King has slipped the keys from one hand to the other and turned the knob on the glove box toward the unlocked position. Strayhorn and Clementine have planned to speak. The price he’s asking for the Broadnax field is too high. The Old Broadnax did not realize he’d signed a bill of sale without the ten-year return clause. That was a very bad move. Unreasonable, and now Fairlie’s back, and disinherited. That’s what they’d say.

  And Butch had planned to say that he would’ve done something about it except that the old man didn’t tell him anything until it was done. Until he was taking the old sharecrop house off to put on their land. Which, by rights, he should have gotten the hog houses, too.

  Strayhorn and Clementine try to keep Fairlie back, because he’s so hotheaded. He hasn’t lived here in Gunnerson with King and his people. Fairlie’s been away, and they know how to talk to King. He may be an arrogant son of a bitch, but he’ll back down, and everything will go on. You can’t make a living with everybody at one another’s throat all the time. They know towns like that. Gunnerson’s not that kind of town.

  But Fairlie and Butch push past them and try to throw both doors open. King is laid out sideways.

  King kicks at them with his feet as hard as he can, visualizing the fields next to him, where to run. He pulls at the glove box, but the door does not open.

  Greenie is shouting something from behind.

  Which way can he go?

  What does he know that they don’t?

  What does he know that can save him, except that the wind blows backward and they, too, are breathing in the ashes of their children? His grandson with crinkly half-moon eyes will not be safe unless he interposes his body between these men and the future.

  Broadnax shouts.

  They take the kicks in their bellies from his big feet, stronger than any that have ever dared assault them. Greenie thought they were only going to talk. He calls to King to stop now, while there’s still time.

  Potts is knocked down, backward, and Clem steps in to take his place. Four of them try to push the feet toward the other door, which Fairlie is smashing into his head. Once, twice, three times. He’s come up so hard and the head and shoulders have taken a lot of punishment. Take the hit. Pulled off a mule, knocked off the dray, pushed against the barn wall by the bull when the cow was in heat. Take the hit. There’s pain somewhere; do not take notice. What works? He coils his body to spring again. It responds slowly. His hands still work fine.

  Fairlie is the first to see when the glove box falls open that it holds a small pistol. He didn’t expect it; he didn’t expect the strong hand that jabs out across the cab to reach for it. Fairlie is terrified now. “He’s got a gun!” He keeps ramming the door. “Jesus, Butch, grab ’is hand.”

  Butch does grab the hand, and it pulls him into the window, slamming Butch’s weight into the door, making it slam even harder into King’s head and shoulders. From behind them a tire iron appears. The first time it misses King’s head, catches King’s and Butch’s arms, intertwined, and breaks the window glass. The men scream at Butch to let go, because he’s in the way, but he cannot, because King drags his arm over the glass, skin, flesh, muscle, ligament, laid back to the bone.

  “Goddamnit, somebody help him,” Fairlie screams. His brother is in shock. His open mouth does not even yell. “Gimme the tire iron, Greenie!”

  Greenie delivers, but falls, and Strayhorn steps on him. Greenie rolls to the side sick with it all, begging God’s forgiveness. They never even talked to King like Fairlie said they would. Greenie knows he shouldn’t have come. He needs another drink. He crawls toward the stand of oaks, hoping that the woods will open up and swallow him.

  It is hard, backbreaking work to subdue King Needham. He is a dangerous animal, a black snake that can strike when you think you’ve got him, after you’ve bashed him with the shovel, cut off his tail. The fangs are still poison. The muscles can still contract on their own. Put your eye out, bite you or something. Butch will never have the use of that arm again. Strayhorn’s knee is damaged. Fairlie’s got the shakes. Thank God the big red Negro was laid out when they started, not sitting, not standing on his own two feet. Jesus. He is an animal. It’s like trying to stop a bull with your bare hands.

  Martin Mitchell has gone crazy. He’s on the driver’s side by the feet. He runs around and grabs the tire iron from Greenie, who’s rolling on the ground like a goddamned little girl. He raises the tire iron in his hand and the others stand clear of him, because he is swinging wild, hitting the hood, the car door, hitting Needham’s legs, shattering the windows, and grabbing through the window at the great, flailing, dangerous, bloodied body. King tore up Butch’s arm. Mitchell cuts up his own arm. It bleeds onto the car door and down his side. He lets out war yells like an Indian.

  “Shut up, Mitch,” Clem yells.

  Mitchell opens his mouth, spreading wide the brown stumps of jagged teeth. He roars into Clem’s face like boys roar at the cat. Raaahhhhhr!

  King can only recoil and propel himself one way or the other. They’ll smash either way. He has to get out, because otherwise they’ll kill him here in the cab of his own truck. He has to get out, past the berry bushes, where the creek ran. It’s mud-and-stone now. He knows it well, and they’ll lose their footing. He could get up to Selma’s mare. No, the mare is gone. He thinks of her new chicks.

&
nbsp; He has to keep thinking. The pain is coming down now, blunt and terrible, to distract him, but he must keep thinking to stay alive. He has to get out of the cab. He has to sit up or else shoot out feet first. He tries to push out with his feet, but something keeps bashing from that end. He kicks and the door gives way, but then they push in again. Now they are trying to grab his arms, because he’s managed to thrash away from the head bangings. They are pulling open the door, and he crouches to spring. But someone has tied his legs. Now they are pulling. He draws his knees up as far as he can and shoots his legs out. One man falls down. He can hear him. It’s an opening. With legs together, he kicks again. The rope loosens. It’s wrapped, but not tied. A few more and he’ll pull his arms back from protecting his head and spring out onto his feet. He’ll get only one or two more kicks.

  Mitchell has given three men the rope to pull tight around Needham’s legs. It’s hard to get the rope underneath. Potts yells: “Wrap it!”

  Clementine dives down and takes a hit to the face. King’s boots break his jaw. Clementine rolls to the side. This time they leave him be. Potts calls for Greenie to help, but Greenie has disappeared. The rope finally encircles the legs.

  “Pull!” Mitchell hollers. He raises the tire iron. King falls back, then springs, feet touching the ground, legs straight. They almost lose him. Mitchell smashes at air. He bashes the running board. He wounds himself. But he doesn’t stop until he hears bone crack in the legs. King howls a low strangling snarl like a bear and starts to slump back into the truck. Can’t go down; he knows it.

  He must be finished off before he strikes again.

  ———

  Because the air is disturbed and the animals are restive, stamping, frightened, Jones runs back to the dry stone wall where he’d first heard, then seen, the girl’s dog, and then the girl. He looks over the wall and sees the cars. He sees the Ford, and he sees them bunched like ants on either side of a caterpillar. He sees the smoke. Jones jumps the stone wall and runs down the hill. He trips and tumbles, rolls to a stop, gets up, and runs on. He runs across the field of stumps and holes, into the road and halfway up the next field, by the creek bed, and next to the woods.