Sweeping Up Glass

by Carolyn Wall

  The only destination I can think that will hold us all is Wing’s hotel. On the other hand, Will’m is there, and I’d be bringing the Cott’ners right to his door.

  63

  We turn off the highway. This old tank won’t run on fumes. When it stops dead, the Cott’ners will appear out of nowhere, pry open the door, and swarm the bus. I figure they’ll beat us all senseless, then fling us through the ice on the Capulet. Then I see the last rise in the road before town.

  Somewhere behind is Phelps’ righteous club—Judas Iscariots who admired sighted silver-faces and then shot for sport. Worse, they donned robes, tried men, and snapped necks. And Wing, in his innocence, has bedded them down. If we go to the hotel now, the Cott’ners will destroy the place, and all Wing’s work will have been for naught. What’s left of Grace Harris’s memory will be nothing more than a pile of kindling.

  For now, the Cott’ners are keeping their distance.

  “Take us to my place,” I tell Longfeet.

  He pulls off onto Farm Road One.

  “Turn up in the driveway, will you?” Then I tell him the rest of my plan.

  Longfeet listens and nods.

  The Cott’ners’ cars haven’t come into sight. Maybe they’re making telephone calls, finding guns, digging graves. Telling their wives they’ll be late getting home.

  God, where is our help?

  The temperature must be rising because the snow has turned to a thick layer of slush. We pull up in our side yard, and Longfeet stops the bus by the outbuilding, the old toolshed where Pap once worked the still. I open the shed door. Longfeet and I move sacks of feed, a couple of barrels, a half dozen crates. Junk helps. He catches hold of the iron ring in the floor and raises the door. Below is the tunnel Pap once dug. Smells of mold, and decay, and rotting earth rush out.

  Longfeet and the Reverend are helping folks off the bus and into the shed where they cry out and balk, and I run for the lantern on the porch. But when the back door opens and Will’m comes out holding the cub, I’m near tears, near the end. I have saved nothing.

  Junk looks at the slush. “Tracks lead right to us.”

  “I’ma close the door, cover it over,” Longfeet says. “Miss Livvy right. I gon’ pass by the barn, that old cabin, drive ’round and ’round. When I see ’em comin’, I lead ’em down the road. Maybe they follow me, maybe not. But you got to hurry.”

  The Reverend holds his daughter in his arms as she pleads, “Longfeet, if they catch up with you—”

  “Don’t you worry,” Longfeet tells his wife.

  “All right, then,” Junk says. “Reverend, you take this lantern and lead the way down. Love Alice and I will come last with Miss Livvy.”

  Where are the marshals?

  One by one, the Reverend and his flock disappear into the hole. Across the yard, Junk and I drop into the muddy grave we began digging three days ago. Junk has the shovel. I scrabble with my hands. In a few more minutes it’ll be our turn to follow the others through the trap door. I wonder, now, if Pap dug it not so much for convenience, but in case he needed to get away from Phelps.

  Then Junk strikes something with his shovel. He gets down on his knees in the muck, works his hands. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Junk swear. With a sucking sound, a tin box pulls loose, and he passes it to me.

  Longfeet shouts, “You-all got to hurry! I got to move this bus!”

  We scramble from the hole. I take Will’m’s hand. Through the winter trees to the west I see the highway. A long line of dark cars slow to make the turn.

  Into the shed, then three steps, four, into the belly of the earth. Six, seven. My heart bangs in my throat, and I imagine I can’t breathe. Will’m is behind me. With the ninth step, I am standing on the plywood floor, but it’s soft and splintered, and water rises. The braces have rotted, and the walls are pure mud. There’s a great deal of moaning and some in front of us cry out. I try not to think about the soil overhead, how it crawls with vermin and seals us in. The Reverend once baptized me in the name of this earth. I’m counting on it to save us now.

  Even in the muck I pass the word to sit down. If we don’t, many will soon faint, and we must not make a sound. Will’m and I sit, and Miss Wellette, next to me, folds herself into the slop. I know so many old feet and legs and knees are cramping, and I wonder how the children are so quiet. I send along word, too, that the other end is only plywood and if worse comes to worse they might push through into our cellar. What comes back along the line is not spoken. They’ll die here before they’ll hang in Phelps’ barn.

  Junk and Love Alice scramble down the steps. Longfeet closes the door and stacks things to cover our hiding place. We hear the bus rumble and fade away, locking us in with mildew and our prayers. Love Alice is in her husband’s arms.

  There are murmurs and static bursts of sobbing, but then they are still. I can hear them breathing, and wonder how long it will be before the Reverend’s lantern goes out. I put my arm around Will’m, hold him tight.

  Miss Wellette lays her hand on top of his head. A last blessing.

  “We’ll be all right,” I say.

  Truth is, we’ll run out of air and freeze. We’re in here for life, and probably for death. In this belly of the earth, I wish I could see Will’m’s gray eyes. I know he has tucked the cub under his shirt, against his heart.

  “Gran? When the marshals come,” he says softly, “will they know we’re down here?”

  I pull him into this coat that isn’t mine, and button it around us. The air is hot and syrupy. He tucks his head under my chin, and I close my eyes. I never could have asked for more. I’m going to heaven, rocking Will’m.

  64

  The first to arrive were Misters French and Andrews, and that fat-faced Doyle Pink, who once swore to defend and protect us. They were followed by a dozen or so more, and by the time they got organized and ripped up the trap door, Junk was ready. He launched himself at them. With his fists he bloodied the first four or five before they wrestled him to the ground.

  Even as Will’m was losing consciousness, he now swears he could hear sirens out on the highway.

  I have no idea how many deputies Marshal Quaid brought, but they drove into our yard and surrounded the Cott’ners who had dragged some of us, unconscious, from the hole. That was their mistake. They should have left us there.

  Now Junk and I stand looking down at the hole near the outhouse, where I once thought we’d find what was left of Pap’s bones. Love Alice is beside me—flanked by three federal marshals in yellow rain gear, for it’s been pouring, but now the sun has come out.

  “Let Marshal Quaid take you to the hospital, Junk,” I say.

  “Hush, O-livvy,” Love Alice says, holding an umbrella.

  Wing is here, too.

  We go into the house. I lay the tin box on the table and lift the latch. Inside is an oilcloth wrapping, and inside that are the two black binders I remember as Pap’s doctoring books. Marshal Quaid watches as I lift out the first one, open it, and turn the pages. In Pap’s webby script are dates and accounts of the hangings he witnessed. He wrote about the Phelps boys shooting Booger. The inductions that went on in the barn, the trials. The pages are filled, front and back—victims and judges, and who acted as jury. Name after name of the men who were involved, and, to my surprise, a few women, including Elizabeth Phelps. Sketches of coloreds with their necks in nooses, standing on their toes on tight bales, while hooded men kicked the cotton from under them. Here are maps of their graves in Phelps’ north acreage, the same field Sanderson Two protects from coyotes.

  With an enormous sigh, I give the books up. Wing puts his arms around me. Quaid wraps the books gently in the oilcloth and lays them back in the box. He hoists it under one arm, and shakes my hand. Then he reaches down and shakes Junk’s, too.

  Then, blessing of blessings, the marshal tips his hat to Love Alice.

  She looks in his eyes and tells him he’s having too much pecan pie for supper. And that, she says,
grinning, is one almighty truth.

  65

  Although I’m exhausted, I can’t stop talking. I’ve told Wing about Alton and James Arnold Phelps, and about death dealt out by the Cotton Club. How they chose victims at random and did such a thorough job, locally, that there are no young colored men left in Aurora. Along with names I’ve given, Pap’s records are enough to convict more than a hundred men. I suspect that, by now, a lot of them are dried-up old codgers.

  Wing says he wished he’d known. Just so he could save me. I love him for that and don’t mention the uselessness of such a thought. He had his hands full.

  Quaid says his office has been investigating the cotton trials for a long time. Too bad, he adds, my pap didn’t know that.

  So far they’ve found no trace of Elizabeth. Phelps probably drowned her in the Capulet where enough folks were baptized to sanctify her for eternity.

  Will’m is happy he didn’t “miss all the important stuff.” I wish he had, and before long we’ll talk, he and I, about our time in that tunnel. I’m glad he saved the cub.

  For hours, Wing listens. I don’t point out that Cott’ners bedded down in these very rooms. Wing’s eyes are already heavy with sorrow. As best I can, I replay the scenes with Alton and Doyle Pink, the truth about Pap, the fire at the church. I tell him about the ride to the penitentiary. When I tell him about seeing Pap, Wing closes his eyes. I don’t know whether he’s picturing it all, or if the enormity of it is just too much. I talk on, coming to the part about phoning him. He says it was a gift.

  “Feels like I owe somebody a nickel,” he says.

  I reach for the brush that he’s using on my hair.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” he says, pulling back. “All these years I wanted to take your hair down. Like that might shake loose all the hurt between us.”

  I bite my lip. I’m right out of the tub with the gilded claw feet, the one next to the pull-chain toilet I demonstrated back when the hotel opened. I can’t think why Wing would want to change a thing. He turns me to him. We’re sitting on my bed in the velvet-draped room. He lifts my chin, puts his mouth on mine. We’ve crossed rivers of time, and our heat is so powerful I can’t breathe in the face of it.

  No matter how hard we try, we can’t get close enough, but hold each other so tight, it’s a miracle one of us doesn’t break. Wing sheds his clothes and lays me back, settles himself, easy, on top. He kisses my neck, hides his face in my hair, and lifts my nightgown.

  A vision of us, naked in the woods at fourteen, makes me smile. It’s been so long since I’ve felt his hands that I’m trembling like some heroine on the rack over at Dooby’s.

  Funny how a body leans into this need. I part my legs and bend my knees. Lift myself to him.

  “Oh God, Olivia. I love you, I love you.”

  Afterward, I want only to lie between his legs, my head on his chest. Slide in and out of sleep. Sometime in the night, his hands caress me.

  “Shh,” he says against my hair.

  In the waxy moonlight I see the muscles in his shoulders, the pleasure on his face. Was there ever a night when we didn’t do this—work for breath, try new kisses, find places to touch. I shift slightly, inviting his body, his loving. Heat rises until I cry out for him to fill me again, but he lays a finger on my lips, and won’t hurry. I wonder if God is instructing him in that. In any case, Love Alice is right about the pecan pie.

  Epilogue

  Will’m turned twelve the following month. I gave him Saul’s rifle. He blew out his birthday candles at a party given by Miss Dovey, who had just celebrated her own birthday. On the night of the fire, she was eighty-two.

  When Evan Quaid’s boys arrested Henry French, the hardware closed down. Smooth as pouring gravy, it became the new African Methodist Episcopal Church. French’s niece, Eloise, didn’t protest.

  On Easter Sunday, the folks at Stipling called Doc Pritchett and said Ida had died. I hope next time she’ll choose an easier life, if such things are chosen. We buried her in the Methodist churchyard, not far from Alton and James Arnold Phelps. I was right—all things come around.

  When summer arrived, there was talk of a new highway being laid closer to Aurora, and it woke us all up. Maybe folks stopped being afraid. One of the Nailhow boys reopened the old bakery, and another the bank. Eloise French is putting in a beauty parlor; she’ll charge three dollars for a permanent wave. Will’m will graduate from high school a year early. I wonder if Molly will be on his arm—or maybe a gaggle of girls will covet him, the way they did Wing. He reads a lot and talks about installing a coal furnace and adding two rooms and a wide front porch. Occasionally, but not often, we hear a wolf howl high up on the mountain.

  On a more precious note, Love Alice’s niece passed over last winter, and left a brand-new infant named Roseanne. Love Alice and Junk are taking the train from Paramus tomorrow, bringing the baby home. I picture a sweet darkling in pink bonnet and booties, her hand no bigger than the end of Junk’s thumb. Heaven will be in Miz Hanley’s eyes; a baby will rest on her bosom.

  I don’t know if Wing and I will ever marry. But he’s already sold the hotel and is building us a house on Cooper’s Ridge—a fine brick place with a real furnace and a grated road winding up to it. We’ll live there together. I am less shapely than ever, and he is plagued with rheumatism. However, none of that matters when we make love, when we sleep curled together in the same four-poster where Pauline and I were born.

  Most of all, Wing and I drive to Kingston to see Pap every Sunday—in seven weeks he’ll be coming home, paroled in exchange for being the state’s witness. When we pull up our chairs and Pap looks at me through the double glass, this resurrection is the third greatest blessing I’ve ever known.

  Big Ruse died in March, when snow collapsed the roof of the restaurant. Little Ruse had the place rebuilt. On our way home from Kingston, Wing and I stop there for supper—pot roast, sausage, or corned beef and cabbage.

  Alas, in Aurora, there’s still division between coloreds and whites. I’m equally to blame. A long time ago, Love Alice said it right—what we think to be so, often isn’t. It’s not that I pretended—I just didn’t see. Maybe, in the next hundred years, we’ll at least know the difference.

  Sweeping Up Glass

  A Novel

  Carolyn Wall

  A Reader’s Guide

  The Birth of Sweeping Up Glass

  by Carolyn Wall

  I was teaching a group of writing students in my living room, and the subject for the evening was “following the heart.” I used baseball as the metaphor. “When the mind sets up chatter,” I said, “the heart can’t remember its name, let alone watch the ball.”

  At the time, I’d sold several hundred articles, short stories, columns, and reviews, and as a wife and mother of four, I had become more subservient to the Texaco bill and the electric company than any elusive chamber of the heart.

  But that night, I swept my class out the door and, still revved from the emotion of my own lecture, I went to the computer and fingered the keys. Out fell a scene from Sweeping Up Glass, the one in which Olivia has just told Percy that the baby is his. He shoves her out of his car, and she lies on the side of the road, the broken blue sequins of her dress making her think the stars have fallen. With the baby ready to make its exit, Olivia, stunned with gin, listens to the wolves calling down the night and waits for Ida to come out and fetch her. I had no idea where that scene came from.

  Still, I knew how to be a stubborn child, so I backed up and let Olivia boil over. I knew what it was like to adore a father, and experience hellfire with a ma’am, so much of this book is culled from my life. The first character to be spun from thin air was Love Alice. Her name, and its reason for being, burst in my head like a kernel of corn popping.

  Love Alice was the first chirping robin of spring, and she had this gift, could look in another’s eyes and know his Truths. Only in subtle ways could Love Alice tell us how she saw herself. Afterward, I briefly considered
writing a book from her viewpoint, but she was too profound, too accepting, and I’d never be able to sustain her for that long. Love Alice was the perfect friend.

  Junk was enormous fun to write, and at the end of each scene, I had trouble leaving him. He became Love Alice’s soul mate, Olivia’s rock, and a baptizer and pillar of the community. Because I wanted this book to also be about “overcoming,” it seemed only right that he, too, had been badly hurt.

  In my stories, I love to harbor, then expose, secrets. Not all of them, when let loose, bloom as deliciously as my hotelier and trumpet player. I fashioned him from sweet fantasy—comfortably handsome, close to his God, and sexy to the core. Every woman should experience one Wing Harris.

  Although my face is that peachy color we folks call white, I live in a mostly black community. I love its fluid movement, the hum of its language. I was not at all surprised when Olivia prayed to God to change the color of her skin. I began her story upon conception: her refusal to leave her mother’s womb, how Ida could not recognize her birth and was trucked off to an asylum. Here’s a true story that I almost included in this book. Maybe it’ll show up in a later one.

  When I was born, we lived over a grocery store in Toronto. My father built crates in an alley for Canada Box, and sold meat pies from the basket of his bicycle. With my mother gone off to a small private hospital for shock treatments, we moved into rooms at the top of Gramma’s house.