Mudbound

by Hillary Jordan

  Ronsel gave a big booming laugh. “You must a caught hell back at the Officers’ Club.”

  “My buddies never let me hear the end of it. The ones who survived, that is.”

  “Yeah. I hear you.”

  It was nearing dark and cold enough that I could see his breath and mine, mingling in the air. I put the truck in gear and we drove the rest of the way to the farm in silence, letting the bourbon be our conversation, back and forth. When we pulled up to the Jackson place, Hap was outside filling a bucket at the pump. The look of alarm on his face when he saw his son in the cab of the truck was so exaggerated it was comical.

  I rolled down my window. “Evening, Hap.”

  “Everything all right, Mist Jamie?”

  “Everything’s fine. I just gave Ronsel here a lift from town.”

  Ronsel opened the door and got out, a bit unsteadily. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.” As he was about to shut the door, I said, “I expect I’ll be heading into town again next Saturday afternoon. If you like I’ll stop by here, see if you want a ride.”

  Ronsel glanced at his father, then back at me. He nodded his head once, as solemnly as a judge. And in that moment, sealed his fate.

  Maybe that’s cowardly of me, making Ronsel’s the trigger finger. There are other ways to look at it, other turning points I could pick, eeny, meeny, miny, moe: When that car backfired. When he got in the cab of the truck. When I handed him the whiskey. But I think it was right then, when he stood half-drunk in the rain and nodded his head. And I believe Ronsel would tell you the same thing, if you could ask him, and he could answer.

  III.

  LAURA

  I FELL IN LOVE with my brother-in-law the way you fall asleep in the car when someone you trust is driving—gradually, by imperceptible degrees, letting the motion lull your eyes closed. Letting, that’s the key word. I could have stopped myself. I could have shoved those feelings into some dark corner of my mind and locked them away, as I’d done with so many other feelings I’d found troubling. I tried to, for a time, but it was a halfhearted effort at best, doomed to failure.

  Jamie set about making me love him from the first day he arrived. Complimenting me on my cooking and doing little things for me around the house. Things that said, I see you. I think about what might please you. I was starved for that kind of attention, and I soaked it up like a biscuit soaks up gravy. Henry was never a thoughtful man, not in the small, everyday ways that mean so much to a woman. In Memphis, surrounded by dozens of doting Chappells and Fairbairns, I hadn’t minded so much, but at Mudbound I’d felt the lack of attention keenly. Henry was wholly preoccupied with the farm. I would have gotten more notice from him if I’d grown a tail and started to bray.

  I want to make one thing clear: When I say that Jamie set about making me love him, I don’t mean that he seduced me. Oh, he flirted with me plenty, but he flirted with everybody, even the men. He liked to win people. That makes it sound like a game, and perhaps to a certain type of man it is, but Jamie was no rake. He needed to win them. I didn’t see that then. I saw only the way he leaned forward whenever I spoke, his head cocked slightly to one side as if to better catch my words. I saw the wildflowers he left for me in a milk bottle on the kitchen table, and the happy smiles of my children when he teased them.

  Isabelle was his pet, and I was glad of it. I could never love her enough or give her enough attention. Jamie saw her need and met it with extravagant affection, which she returned in full measure. When he was in the room, none of the rest of us existed for her. He’d come in dirty and worn out from the fields, and she’d hold her chubby arms up to him like a Baptist preacher calling on the Almighty. Jamie would shake his head and say, “I’m too tired to hold you tonight, little Bella.” She’d stamp her foot imperiously and reach for him, knowing better, and he’d swoop down and gather her into his arms, twirling her around and around while she squealed with delight. It wasn’t just that he loved her; it was that he loved her, in particular. That was everything to her. Before long, she was insisting we all call her Bella. She refused to answer to Isabelle, even after Henry spanked her bottom for it. But she’s his child as well as mine, at least in stubbornness, and eventually she got her way.

  Even dimmed as he was, Jamie charmed and leavened us all. Pappy carped less, and Henry laughed more often and slept more soundly. I came alive again, like I hadn’t been since before the miscarriage. I was less resentful of Henry and less mindful of the privations of the farm. He must have known Jamie was the cause of my improved spirits, but if it bothered him he didn’t let on. He seemed to accept that Jamie “made the girls sparkle,” as he’d told me all those years ago. It would have been unthinkable to Henry that his wife would have sexual feelings for his little brother.

  And that’s exactly what I was having: sexual feelings, of an intensity I’d never experienced in my life. Anything could bring them on: slicing a tomato, pulling weeds in the garden, running a comb through my hair. My senses were acute. Food was more succulent and smells more pungent. I was hungrier than usual and perspired more often. Not even pregnancy had made my body so strange to me.

  Even so, it all might have come to nothing if Jamie hadn’t built the shower for me. That shower became the crucible of my feelings for him. To understand why, you have to imagine life without running water or bathrooms. It was an all-day undertaking to get the whole family clean, so we bathed only on Saturdays. During the summer months I filled the tub and let the morning sun warm the water. I bathed the girls first, then myself, praying nobody would come calling while I was naked. For privacy we hung sheets from two clotheslines, placing the tub between them—an arrangement that left the bather exposed on two sides and gave the whole country an eyeful on windy days. After my bath I refilled the tub for Pappy. When he was done, I emptied and refilled it again—sometimes with the old man’s grudging help, but more often by myself—for when Henry and Jamie came in from the fields. In the winter, the tub had to be dragged into the kitchen and the water hauled in and heated on the stove. Still, for all the work involved, Saturday was my favorite day of the week. It was the only day I felt truly clean.

  The rest of the time, we stank. You can say all you want about honest sweat, but it smells just as bad as any other kind. Henry didn’t seem to mind, but I never got used to it. I remembered my little bathroom on Evergreen Street with swooning nostalgia. I’d taken it completely for granted, even grumbled occasionally about the poor water pressure and the chips in the porcelain tub. Now, as I took my hasty spit baths from a pail of cold water in the kitchen, that little bathroom seemed a place of impossible luxury.

  The worst time for me was during my menses. The musky-sweet reek of my blood on the cloths I wore seemed to fill the house until I could hardly breathe. I’d wait each night for the others to fall asleep, then tiptoe to the kitchen to wash the cloths and myself. One night, as I squatted over the basin with my nightgown bunched around my waist and my hand moving awkwardly between my legs, Henry walked in on me. He turned quickly and left, but oh, how ashamed I was!

  Jamie must have guessed how I felt. One day in March, I returned from an overnight shopping trip to Greenville to discover a narrow wooden stall in back of the house, with a large bucket attached to a pulley contraption mounted on top. Jamie was just finishing it when the girls and I pulled up in the car.

  “What is it, Uncle Jamie?” asked Amanda Leigh.

  “It’s a shower, little petunia.”

  “I don’t like showers, I like baths!” cried Bella.

  “I didn’t build it for you, honey. I built it for your mama.”

  Bella frowned at that. Jamie tousled her hair, but his eyes were on me. “Well,” he said, “what do you think?”

  “I think it’s the most marvelous thing I’ve ever seen.”

  And it was. Of course, like everything at Mudbound, the shower required some effort. You still had to heat water on the stove and haul it outside—two or three
bucketfuls, depending on whether or not you were washing your hair. You lowered the big shower bucket, poured the hot water in, then raised it again by pulling on a rope attached to the pulley. Then you went in the stall and got undressed, draping your clothes over the walls. When you were ready, you tugged gently on a second rope attached to the bucket’s lip, tilting it and releasing just enough water so you could soap yourself. Finally, you pulled on the rope again and rinsed until all the water was gone.

  I had my first shower that very evening. It was one of those warm soft nights in early spring when the air itself seems like a living being, surrounding and gently supporting you. As soon as I stepped into the stall and closed the door, I was in a private universe. On the other side of the walls, I could hear the deep thrumming of insects and frogs, the constant music of the Delta, and more distantly, the men’s voices interwoven with the sound of Amanda Leigh practicing her piano scales. I took off my clothes and just stood there for several minutes in that warm, embracing air. Overhead floated large clouds, stained fantastic hues of pink and gold by the setting sun. I pulled the rope and felt the water stream down my body and thought of my brother-in-law, of his hands sawing the planks, fitting them together, nailing them down. He’d even made me a soap dish, I saw. It was slatted at the bottom and held a small bar of embossed purple soap, the kind they had in fancy stores in Memphis. When I brought it to my nose I smelled the dusky, pungent sweetness of lavender. It was my favorite scent; I’d mentioned it to Jamie once, years ago. And he had remembered.

  I ran the soap across my body and wondered: as he was building the shower, had he imagined me in it like this, naked and free under the darkening sky? I don’t know what shocked me more, the thought itself, or the heavy ripple of pleasure it sent through me.

  HENRY WAS THE beneficiary of all this newfound ardor. He’d almost always been the one to initiate our lovemaking, but now I found myself seeking him out in our bed, to his surprise and my own. Sometimes he would refuse me. He never gave an explanation, just took my exploring hand and returned it to my own side of the bed, patting it dismissively before he turned away. The anger that filled me on those nights was so hot and raw I was surprised it didn’t set the bed ablaze. I’d never refused him, not once in all the years of our marriage. How dared he push me aside like an unwanted pet?

  I tried to keep my feelings for Jamie secret, but I’ve never been good at subterfuge; my father used to call me his little trumpeter for the way my face proclaimed my every emotion. One day Florence and I were working in the house together, me cooking and her sorting laundry, and she said, “Mist Jamie doing some better.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think he is.”

  Seven months on the farm had done him good. I had no illusions that he was completely healed, but he was having fewer nightmares, and physically he seemed stronger. My cooking had put some meat on him; I was especially proud of that.

  “He got hisself a woman, that’s why,” Florence said, with a sly smile.

  I felt a constriction in my throat, like a stone was lodged there. “What are you talking about?”

  “See here?” She held up one of his shirts. There was a smudge of red on the collar.

  “That’s blood,” I said. “He probably cut himself shaving.” But I knew better. Dried blood would have been brown.

  “Well, it sure is some mighty sweet-smelling blood then,” said Florence.

  The stone in my throat seemed to swell until I could hardly swallow.

  “Ain’t good for a man to be without a woman,” she went on conversationally. “Now a woman, she likes a man, but she can get along just fine without him. The Almighty seen to that. But a man ain’t never gone thrive without a woman by his side. He be looking high and low till he find one. Course Mist Jamie, he the kind come by em easy. They be lined up like daisies on the side of the road, just waiting for him to pluck em. He just got to reach out his hand and—”

  “Shut your mouth,” I said. “I won’t listen to another word of such low talk.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, then Florence dropped her gaze, but not before I saw the knowing look in her dark eyes. “Now go and fetch some water,” I said. “I want to make some coffee.”

  She obeyed, moving with an unhurriedness that bordered on insolent. When the front door closed behind her, I went to the table and picked up the shirt. I raised it to my nose and smelled the cloying scent of lily-of-the-valley perfume. I tried to imagine the type of woman who would wear that scent. Her dresses would be low-cut and her fingernails would be painted the same shade of carmine as her lipstick. She’d have a throaty laugh and smoke cigarettes from a long holder and let her slip show on purpose when she crossed her legs. She’d be nothing but a cheap little tramp, I thought.

  “Smell something you like, gal?” I turned and saw Pappy framed in the front window. I felt my cheeks flame. How long had he been standing there, and how much had he overheard? Long enough and plenty, judging by the smirk on his face.

  Nonchalantly, or so I hoped, I dropped the shirt into the basket. “Just sweat,” I said. “You know, the odor that comes from a person’s body when they do work of some kind? Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

  I left the room before he could reply.

  THE TROUBLE STARTED the first Saturday in April. I was driving the old man to town when we encountered Jamie coming the other way in the truck. As we drew closer I could see Ronsel Jackson in the passenger seat. He’d wisely kept his head down in the year since he’d been home. We rarely saw him, except as a distant figure in the fields, hunched over his plow. That view of him seemed to have appeased Pappy; at least, he’d stopped ranting about “that smart-mouthed nigger” on a daily basis.

  “Who’s that with Jamie?” Pappy said, squinting at them.

  The old man was too vain to wear glasses in public, so he often depended on us to be his eyes. For once, I was glad. “I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t make him out.”

  The road was too narrow for two vehicles to pass. Jamie pulled the truck over to let us by, and I was forced to slow to a crawl. As we passed them, Jamie raised his hand in greeting. Ronsel sat beside him, looking straight ahead.

  “Stop the car!” Pappy ordered. I braked, but Jamie drove on. Pappy’s head whipped around to follow the truck through the rear window. “Did you see that? I think he had that nigger with him.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “The Jackson boy, the one with the big mouth. You didn’t see him?”

  “No. The sun was in my eyes.”

  Pappy turned to me, fixing me with his basilisk stare. “You lying to me, gal?”

  “Of course not, Pappy,” I replied, with all the innocence I could muster.

  He grunted and faced forward, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ll tell you one thing, it better not have been that nigger.”

  We ran our errands and returned to the farm several hours later. I was hoping for a word alone with Jamie before Pappy could speak to him, but as luck would have it, he and Henry were out front working on the truck when we pulled up. The children ran to meet us, clamoring for the candy I’d promised them.

  “I’ll give it to you inside,” I said. “Jamie, would you help me carry these groceries in the house?”

  “Wait just a goddamn minute,” Pappy said to Jamie. “Who was that you had with you in the truck?”

  Jamie’s eyes flickered to me. I shook my head slightly, hoping he’d catch on and make something up.

  “Well? Are you gonna answer me or not?” Pappy said.

  “Girls, go inside,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Reluctantly, they went. Jamie waited until they were out of earshot before answering Pappy. “As a matter of fact, it was Ronsel Jackson. What’s it to you?” His voice was steady, but his cheeks had a hectic look. I wondered if he’d been drinking again.

  “What’s this?” asked Henry.

  “I gave Ronsel a lift from town. Evidently our pappy doesn’t approve.” />
  “Not when he’s sitting in the cab with you, I don’t, and I bet your brother don’t either,” Pappy said.

  Henry’s expression was incredulous. “You let him sit inside the truck all the way from town?”

  “What if I did?” Jamie said. “What does it matter?”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t care if they had.”

  They glared at each other, Jamie defiantly, Henry with a familiar mixture of anger, hurt and bewilderment that I’d last seen directed at me. Henry shook his head. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” he said. “I wonder if you do.” He turned and walked toward the house. Jamie looked after him like he wanted to stop him, but he didn’t move.

  “Don’t ever let me catch you giving that jigaboo a ride again,” Pappy said.

  “Or what?” Jamie said. “You gonna come after me with your cane?”

  The old man grinned, revealing his long yellow teeth. He rarely smiled; when he did, the effect was both bizarre and repellent. “Oh, it ain’t what I’ll do to you.”

  Pappy followed Henry inside, leaving me alone with Jamie. His body looked tensed, poised for violence or flight. I was torn between wanting to soothe and chide him.

  “I can’t stay here,” he said. “I’m going to town.”

  To his woman, I thought. “I wish you’d change your mind,” I said. “I’m making rabbit stew for supper.”

  He reached out and lightly brushed my cheek with one finger. I swear I felt that touch in every nerve of my body. “Sweet Laura,” he said.

  I watched him go. As the truck and its wake of dust got smaller and smaller and finally disappeared, I thought, Rabbit stew. That’s what I’d been able to offer him. It was all I would ever be able to offer him. The knowledge was as bitter as bile.