Mudbound

by Hillary Jordan

  “You wanna touch it?” she asked.

  Embarrassed, I looked away. “No, thank you.”

  “You can if you want.” When I hesitated, she said, “Go on. He’s kicking now, you can feel it.”

  I went over to her. As I laid my palm against her belly, her scent enveloped me. Everyone smelled a little ripe on the farm, but Vera’s odor was positively eye-watering. I stood there holding my breath and waited. For a long moment nothing happened. Then I felt two sharp kicks against my hand. I smiled, and Vera smiled back at me, and I saw the ghost of the girl she’d once been. A pretty girl, much like Alma.

  “He’s a feisty un,” she said proudly.

  “You think it’s a boy?”

  “I pray for it. I pray to God every day He’s done sending me girls.”

  Florence brought out a tray with the food and drinks. Vera accepted a glass of water but waved the shortbread away. Alma looked to her mother for permission before taking a piece off the plate. I expected her to cram it in her mouth, but she nibbled at it delicately.

  “Go on now,” her mother said. “I need to have a word with Miz McAllan.”

  “There’s a mockingbird’s nest in that bush over there,” I said.

  Alma went obediently down the steps and over to the bush, and Florence went back in the house. Her footsteps didn’t go far, though, and I knew she was listening.

  “Your Alma’s a good girl,” I said.

  “Thankee. You got two of your own, ain’t you?”

  “Yes. Isabelle’s three and Amanda Leigh’s five.”

  “I reckon they’re good girls too. Reckon you’d do anything for em.”

  “Yes, of course I would.”

  Vera leaned forward. Her eyes seemed to leap out from her haggard face and grab hold of me. “Don’t put us off then,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I expect you’re wanting to, on account of what Carl done last night.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I stammered.

  “I seen that nigger walking this way earlier. I know he must a told you.”

  I nodded reluctantly.

  “We ain’t got nowhere to go if you put us off. Nobody’ll hire us this late in the season.”

  “It’s not up to me, Vera, it’s up to my husband.”

  She laid a hand on her belly. “For this un’s sake, and my other younguns’, I’m asking you to keep us on.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not my decision.”

  “And if it was?”

  If her eyes had accused me, I might have been able to look away from them, but they didn’t. They just hoped, blindly and fiercely.

  “I don’t know, Vera,” I said. “I have my own children to think about.”

  She stood up, stomach first, grunting with the effort. I stood too but didn’t move to help her. I sensed she wouldn’t have wanted it. “Carl never hurt nothing that weren’t his own,” she said. “It ain’t his way. You tell that to your husband when you tell him the rest.” She turned away. “Alma!” she called. “We got to be going now.”

  Alma came at once and helped her mother down the steps, and together they tottered across the yard to the road. I went inside. I needed to see my girls, badly. As I walked past Florence, she muttered, “That man gone burn in hell someday, but it won’t be soon enough.”

  Amanda Leigh was reading quietly on the couch. I scooped her up and carried her into the bedroom where her sister was taking her nap. Isabelle’s features looked blurred and insubstantial under the mosquito netting. I jerked it back, startling her awake, then sat down with Amanda on the bed and crushed them both to me, breathing in their little girl scent.

  “What is it, Mama?” Amanda Leigh asked.

  “Nothing, darling,” I said. “Give your mother a kiss.”

  BAD NEWS IS about the only thing that travels fast in the country. I was giving Amanda Leigh her piano lesson when I heard the car pull up out front, followed by the sound of running feet. The door flew open and Henry came in, looking a little wild. “I stopped at the feed store and heard what happened,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine, Henry.”

  The girls pelted over to him. “Daddy! Daddy!”

  He knelt down and hugged them both so hard they squealed, then came over to me and took me in his arms. “I’m sorry, honey. I know you must have been scared. I’ll go over there right now and tell the Atwoods they have to leave.”

  I hadn’t known what I was going to say to him until that moment, when I found myself shaking my head. “Don’t put them off,” I said.

  He stared at me as though I’d gone crazy. Which I undoubtedly had.

  “Vera Atwood came by this morning, Henry. She’s eight and a half months pregnant. If we put them off now, where would they go? How would they survive?”

  A burst of harsh laughter came from the doorway. I looked up and saw Pappy standing there with a box of groceries. He came in and set them on the table. “Well ain’t this a touching scene,” he said. “Saint Laura, protector of women and children, begging her husband for mercy. Let me ask you this, gal. When Atwood decides to come after you, what are you gonna do then, huh?”

  “He won’t,” I said.

  “And how do you figure that?”

  “Vera swore he wouldn’t. She said he never hurt anything that wasn’t his own.”

  The old man laughed again. Henry’s jaw was tight as he looked at me. “This is farm business,” he said.

  “Honey, please. Just think it over.”

  “I’ll go have a word with Carl tomorrow morning, see what he has to say for himself. That’s all I’ll promise.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  Henry walked toward the front door. “Next thing you know she’ll be telling you what to plant,” Pappy said.

  “Shut up,” Henry said.

  I don’t know who was more astonished, me or Pappy.

  The next day at dinnertime, Henry told us about his meeting with Carl Atwood. Apparently the horse had gotten into the drying shed and had eaten all of Carl’s tobacco. Which explained why the creature had gone so berserk, and why Carl had been so furious.

  “I told him I’d keep him on through the harvest,” Henry said. “But come October, they’ll have to leave. A man who’ll do that, who’ll kill the hardworking creature that saves him from toil and puts food on his table, is a man who can’t be trusted.”

  I thanked him and reached for his hand to give it a squeeze, but he pulled it away. “Now that Carl’s got no plow horse,” he said, “he’ll have to use one of our mules and pay us a half share like the Cottrills. It’ll mean extra money in our pocket. That’s the main reason I’m keeping them on.” His eyes met mine and held them. “There’s no room for pity on a farm,” he said.

  “Yes, Henry. I understand.”

  I didn’t understand, not at all, but I was about to go to school on the subject.

  HAP

  PRIDE GOETH BEFORE destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Many’s the time I’d sermoned on it. Many’s the time I’d stood in front of a church or a tent full of people and praised the meek amongst em while warning the prideful their day of reckoning was coming sooner than they thought, oh yes, it was a-coming right quick and they would pay for their impudent ways. I should a been telling it to the mirror is what I should a been doing, if I’d a listened to my own preaching I wouldn’t a ended up in such a mess. Ain’t no doubt in my mind God had a hand in it. He was trying to instruct me whatall I’d been doing wrong and thinking wrong. He was saying, Hap, you better humble down now, you been taking the blessings I’ve given you for granted. You been walking around thinking you better than some folks cause you ain’t working on halves like they is. You been forgetting Who’s in charge and who ain’t. So here’s what I’m gone do: I’m gone send a storm so big it rips the roof off the shed where you keep that mule you so proud of. Then I’m gone send hail big as walnuts down on that mule, making that mule crazy, makin
g it break its leg trying to bust out of there. Then, just so you know for sure it’s Me you dealing with, the next morning after you put that mule down and buried it and you up on the ladder trying to nail the roof back onto the shed I’m gone let that weak top rung, the one you ain’t got around to fixing yet, I’m gone let it rot all the way through so you fall off and break your own leg, and I’m gone send Florence and Lilly May to a birthing and the twins out to the far end of the field so you laying there half the day. That’ll give you time to think real hard on what I been trying to tell you.

  A dead mule, a busted shed and a broke leg. That’s what pride’ll get you.

  I must a laid there two three hours, tried to drag myself to the house but the pain was too bad. The sun climbed up in the sky till it was right overhead. I closed my eyes against it and when I opened em again there was a scowling red face hanging over me with fire all around the edges of it, looked like a devil face to me. I wondered if I was in hell. I must a said it out loud cause the devil answered me.

  “No, Hap,” he said, “you’re in Mississippi.” He pulled back some and I seen it was Henry McAllan. “I stopped by to see if you had any storm damage.”

  If my leg hadn’t a been hurting so bad I’d a laughed at that. Yessuh, I guess you could say we had us a little damage.

  He went and fetched Ruel and Marlon from the fields. When they picked me up to carry me in the house I must a blacked out cause the next thing I remember is waking up in the bed with Florence leaning over me, tying something around my neck.

  “What you doing?” I said.

  “Somebody must a worked a trick on you. We got to turn it back on em.”

  I looked down under my chin and seen one of her red flannel bags laying there full of God knew what, a lizard’s tail or a fish eye or a nickel with a hole in it, no telling whatall she had in there. “You take that thing off a me,” I told her, “I don’t want none of your hoodoo devilment.”

  “You get well, you can take it off yourself.”

  “Damnit, woman!” I tried to lift myself up so I could get the bag off and pain lit out from my leg, felt like somebody taken a dull saw to it and was working it back and forth, back and forth.

  “Hush now,” Florence said. “You got to lay still till the doctor gets here.”

  “What doctor?

  “Doc Turpin. Mist McAllan went to town to fetch him.”

  “He won’t come out here,” I said. “You know that man don’t like to treat colored folks.”

  “He will if Mist McAllan asks him to,” Florence said. “Meantime I want you to drink some of this tea I made you, it’ll help with the pain and the fever.”

  I swallowed a few spoonfuls but my belly wasn’t having it and I brung it right back up again. The fellow sawing away at my leg picked up his pace and I went back out.

  When I come to it was nighttime. Florence was sleeping in a chair next to the bed with a lit lantern by her feet. Her face looked beautiful and stern with the light shining up from underneath it. My wife ain’t pretty in the average female way but I like her looks just fine. Strong jaw, strong bones and a will to match em, oh yes, I seen that back when we was courting. My brothers Heck and Luther made fun of me for marrying her on account of her being taller than me and her skin being so dark. They was just like our daddy, never did think of nothing but nature affairs in choosing a woman. I tried to tell em, you don’t wed a gal just to linger between her legs, there’s a lot more to a married life than that, but they just laughed at me. Fools, both of em. A man can’t prosper by hisself. Unless he can hold onto his wife and she holds onto him too, he won’t never amount to nothing. Before I married Florence I told her, “I aim to make this a lifetime journey so if you ain’t up for it just say so now and we’ll stop right here.”

  And she said, “Let’s go.” So we went on and got married, that was back in ’23.

  She must a felt me thinking bout her cause her eyes opened. “You wasting kerosene,” I said.

  “I reckoned you was worth it.” She reached over and felt my forehead. “You running a fever. Let’s get a little food in you, then we’ll try some more willowbark tea.”

  Her touch was gentle but I could tell by the hard set of her mouth she was vexed, and I could guess the reason for it.

  “Doc Turpin never showed up, huh?” I said.

  “No. Told Mist McAllan he’d try to come out tomorrow after he was done with his other patients.”

  I looked down at my leg. It was covered with a blanket and Florence had propped it up on a sack of cornmeal. I shifted a little and was sorry I had.

  “He sent poppy juice for the pain,” she said, holding up a brown bottle. “I gave you some just before sundown. You want some more?”

  “Not yet, we got to talk first. How bad is it?”

  “The skin ain’t broke, but still. It needs to be set by a doctor.”

  “I’d trust you to do it.”

  She shook her head. “If I did it wrong . . .” She didn’t finish the thought but she didn’t have to. A cripple can’t make a crop, and a one-legged man ain’t good for much of anything at all.

  “What’d you tell Henry McAllan?” I said.

  “Bout what?”

  “Bout that mule.”

  “The truth. He could see for hisself it wasn’t in the shed.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He asked if we’d be wanting to use one of his mules and I said what if we did for awhile. And he said then we’d have to pay him a half share instead of a quarter and I said but the fields is already broke. And he said but you still got to lay em off and fertilize and plant and if you using my mule to do it you got to pay me a full half. And I said we wouldn’t be needing his mule, we’d get along just fine without it. And he said we’ll see about that.”

  Meaning, if we couldn’t get the seed in quick enough to suit him he’d make us use his mule anyway and charge us half our crop for it. Half a crop would hardly be enough to keep us all fed for a year, much less buy seed and fertilizer, much less buy us another mule. You got to have your own mule, elseways you lost. Working on halves there ain’t nothing left over, end of the year come around and you got nothing in your pocket and nothing put by for the lean times. Start getting into debt with the boss, borrowing for this, borrowing for that, fore you know it he owns you. You working just to pay him back, and the harder you work the more you end up owing him.

  “We ain’t using Henry McAllan’s mule,” I said. Big words, but they was just words and we both knew it. Ruel and Marlon couldn’t make a twenty-five-acre crop by themselves, they was strong hardworking boys but they was just twelve, hadn’t come into their full growth yet. If Ronsel was home the three of em could a managed it, but it was too much work for two boys with no mule and I didn’t have nearly enough put by for another one. Paid a hundred and thirty dollars for the one that died, reckoned on having him another ten twelve years at least.

  “That’s what I told him,” Florence said. “I also told him I couldn’t keep house for his wife no more cause I’d need to be out in the fields with the twins.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her no but she covered it up with her hand. “Hap, there ain’t no other way and you know it. It won’t kill me to do a little planting and chopping till you get to feeling better.”

  “I promised you I’d never ask you to do field work again.”

  “You ain’t asking, I’m offering,” she said.

  “If I’d a just fixed that ladder.”

  “Ain’t your fault,” she said.

  But it was my fault, for holding my head so high I couldn’t see the rotted board right under my foot. Laying there in that bed, I never felt so low. The tears started to rise up and I shut my eyes to hold em in. Damned if I was gone let into eye-shedding in front of my wife.

  BY THE TIME DOC Turpin finally showed up late the next day my leg was swole up bad. I’d been to him twice before, once when I got lockjaw from stepping on a rusty nail and the second time when Li
lly May taken sick with lung fever. He wasn’t from Marietta, he’d moved up from Florida bout five years ago, word was he was in the Klan down there. We didn’t have the Klan in our part of Mississippi. They tried to come into Greenville back in ’22 but Senator Percy ran em off. He was a real gentleman, Mr. Leroy Percy was, a good sort of white man. Doc Turpin was the other sort. He hated the colored race, just hated us for being alive on this earth. Problem was he was the only doctor anywhere around. You had to go all the way to Belzoni or Tchula for another doctor, either way it was a two-hour wagon ride. Sometimes you had to, depending on when you got sick. Doc Turpin only treated colored people on certain days of the week and it wasn’t always the same. Time I had that lockjaw it was on a Monday and he said he couldn’t see me till Wednesday, but when I took Lilly May to him it was a Friday and he told me it was my lucky day cause Friday was nigger day.

  When Florence brung him in to me he told her to go wait in the other room. “Is there any way I can help you, doctor?” she asked.

  “If I want something I’ll tell you,” he said.

  I would a liked her to stay and I knew she wanted to but she went on and left. Doc Turpin shut the door behind her and came over to the bed. He was a fat fellow with yellow-brown eyes and a funny little tilted-up nose, looked like it belonged on a lady’s face. “Well, boy,” he said, “I heard you went and broke your leg.”

  “Yessuh, I did.”

  “Henry McAllan sure does want to see you get well, so I spose I’d better fix you up. You know how lucky you are to have a landlord like Mr. McAllan?”

  Seemed like every time I seen that man he was telling me how lucky I was. I didn’t feel too lucky right at that moment but I nodded my head. He pulled the cover off a my leg and whistled. “You sure did bust yourself up good. You been taking that pain medicine I sent you?”

  “Yessuh.”

  He poked my leg and I jumped. “When was the last time you had some of it?” he said.