Mudbound

by Hillary Jordan

  “What’s wrong? Has something happened to him?”

  He jerked his shoulder out of my hand. “Let me alone, woman. I’m sure he’s fine.” But he didn’t sound sure, he sounded guilty and oddly defiant at the same time, like a wicked boy who’s done some longed-for forbidden thing: hit his sister, or drowned a cat. A dark suspicion bloomed in me.

  “Has this got something to do with Ronsel Jackson being missing?” I said, watching his face.

  “Who says he’s missing?”

  “His mother. She came by here looking for him around seven.”

  He shrugged. “Niggers go missing all the time.”

  “If you’ve harmed that boy, or Jamie—”

  The old man’s features contorted, and his eyes lit with hate. “You’ll what? Tell me what you’ll do.” His spittle flecked my face. “You think you can threaten me, gal? You better think again. I’ve seen the way you sniff after Jamie like a sow in rut. Henry may be too thick to notice but I ain’t, and I ain’t afraid to tell him either.”

  I could feel my face reddening, but I brazened it out. “My husband would never believe that.”

  He cocked his head to one side, calculating. “Well maybe he will and maybe he won’t, but I bet it sure will stick in his craw. Henry ain’t got much of an imagination but with a thing like that you don’t need one. A thing like that, a man will always wonder about. There’ll always be a little bit of doubt.”

  “You’re despicable.”

  “I’m wet,” he said. “Fetch me a towel.”

  He sauntered to the kitchen table, planted himself in one of the chairs and waited. For a moment I just stood there, paralyzed by the emotions tearing through me—shame, anger, fear, all battling for dominance. Then my limbs seemed to move of their own accord: walking to the linen cupboard, taking out a clean towel, walking back to him. He snatched it from my hand. “Now fix me something to eat. I’m hungry.”

  As mechanically as a windup toy, I went to the stove, took cornbread from the oven and spooned chili onto a plate. Thinking of Henry, and how he would feel if Pappy carried out his threat and said something to him. I set the plate down in front of the old man and started to leave the room.

  “If you hear Jamie come in,” he said, around a mouth full of cornbread, “you come wake me up. And if Henry or anybody else asks you where I was tonight, you tell em I was right here at home with you, hear?”

  I pictured those pale hateful eyes closed, the mouth shut, the skin waxen. Pictured it melting away until there was nothing but smooth white bone, crumbling slowly into dust. “Yes, Pappy,” I said.

  He gave me a malicious smile, knowing he’d won. Still, I thought, there were plenty of ways for an old man to die on a farm. You never knew when tragedy might strike out of the blue.

  I LAY ON MY BED with my eyes open, waiting for Pappy to finish eating and turn in. When I heard the front door open and close, I got up and checked on the children. They were sleeping, with an untroubled abandon I envied. I set about cleaning up the mess the old man had left, grateful for work to keep my hands busy while I waited for Jamie and whatever else would come that night. But imposing order on the house did nothing to ease the turmoil in my mind. A sow in rut. Had I really been so transparent? Was that how Jamie thought of me? A thing like that, a man will always wonder about. I couldn’t bear the thought of causing Henry such pain, even if it meant lying for Pappy. But if he’d harmed Jamie . . .

  Suddenly remembering what the old man had said about Jamie being lost in the dark, I took one of the lanterns out to the front porch with the intention of leaving it there as a beacon. It was then that I saw the light in the barn. Jamie—it had to be.

  I didn’t even stop to change into my boots or put on my coat. I simply walked into the storm, my one thought to reach him. The night was wild: lashing rain, furious gusts of wind that whipped my hair and my clothes. The barn door was shut, and it took all my strength to get it open. Jamie was curled on the dirt floor of the barn, sobbing. The sounds that came from him were so anguished they were nearly inhuman. They mingled with the plaintive lowing of our cow, who was moving restlessly in her stall.

  I ran and knelt beside him. He’d been beaten. There was a cut above his eyebrow, and one cheek was red and swollen. I pulled his head into my lap and when I did, felt a large lump on the back of it. Hot rage surged through me. Pappy had done this to him, I had no doubt of it.

  “I’ll go fetch some water and a clean cloth,” I said.

  “No,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Don’t leave me.” He clung to me, shuddering. I murmured soothing nonsense to him and dabbed at the cut on his forehead with my sleeve. When his sobbing quieted I asked him what had happened, but he just shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. I lay down behind him and curled my body around his, stroking his hair, listening to the droning patter of the rain on the roof. Time passed, ten minutes or twenty. One of the mules whickered, and I felt rather than heard movement, a displacement of air. I opened my eyes. Saw Florence standing in the open doorway of the barn. Her dress was soaked through, and her legs were muddy to the knee. Her face was a blasted ruin. The hairs on my arms rose up and I shivered, knowing something terrible must have happened to Ronsel. Then I saw the knife in her hand. Ronsel is dead, I thought, with absolute certainty, and she means to kill us for it. I was strangely unafraid. What I felt most keenly was pity—for Florence and her son, and for Henry and the girls, who would find our bodies in the barn and grieve and wonder. There was no way I could stop her; I didn’t even think to try. I closed my eyes, pressing myself against Jamie’s back, waiting for what would come. I felt a stirring of air, heard a whisper of bare feet on dirt. When I opened my eyes she was gone. The whole incident had taken perhaps fifteen seconds.

  For a long while I just lay there, feeling my heart trip and gradually slow down until it kept pace with Jamie’s again. A boom of thunder sounded, and I thought of the children. They’d be frightened if they woke and I wasn’t there. Then I thought of Pappy, sleeping alone in the lean-to. And I knew where Florence had been headed.

  I sat up. Jamie made a whimpering sound and drew his knees up to his chest. Before I left the barn I got a horse blanket and covered him with it. Then I knelt beside him and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Sweet Jamie,” I whispered.

  He slept, oblivious, his breath whistling softly with each exhalation.

  I DREAMED OF HONEY, golden and viscous. I floated in it like an embryo. It filled my eyes, nose and ears, shutting out the world. It was so pleasant, to do nothing but float in all that sweetness.

  “Mama, wake up!” The voices were piercing, insistent. I tried to ignore them—I didn’t want to leave the honeyed place—but they kept tugging at me, pulling me out. “Mama, please! Wake up!”

  I opened my eyes to find Amanda Leigh and Bella hovering over me. Their mouths and chins were smeared in honey speckled with cornbread crumbs, and their hands on me were sticky. I looked at the clock on the bedside table; it was after nine. They must have gotten hungry and helped themselves to breakfast.

  “Pappy won’t wake up,” said Amanda Leigh, “and he’s not in his eyes anymore.”

  “What?”

  “He’s in his bed but he isn’t in his eyes.”

  “We can’t find Uncle Jamie,” said Bella.

  Uncle Jamie. I pictured him above me, mouth open, head thrown back in pleasure. Pictured him as I’d left him last night, curled in a ball on the floor of the barn.

  I got up and put on my robe and slippers, then led the girls out to the lean-to. The rain had stopped, but it was a temporary respite; the clouds were dark gray for as far as I could see. The door creaked loudly when I pushed it open. I knew what I would find inside, but even so I wasn’t prepared for the feeling of elation that shot through me when I saw Pappy’s body lying stiff on the cot, vacant of malice and of life.

  “Is he dead?” asked Amanda Leigh.

  “Yes, darling,” I said.

>   “Then how come his eyes are open?”

  Her mouth was pursed, and there was a familiar vertical furrow between her eyebrows, a miniature version of the one that creased Henry’s face when he was perplexed. I kissed her there, then said, “They must have been open when he died. We’ll shut them for him.”

  I pushed down on his eyelids with the very tips of my fingers, trying not to touch the eyeballs, but the lids wouldn’t budge—the old man was contrary even in death. I rubbed my fingers against my robe, wanting to rid them of the feel of that cold, hard flesh.

  “Does he not want you to shut them?” Bella whispered.

  “No, honey. His body is just too stiff right now. It’s a natural part of dying. We’ll be able to shut them tomorrow.”

  There was no blood and no knife wound, but Jamie’s pillow was on the floor. She must have decided to suffocate him instead. I was glad; a wound would have raised unwelcome questions. I bent down to pick up the pillow and put it back on the bed. There was a piece of white fabric on the floor beneath it—a pillowcase, I saw when I picked it up. It wasn’t one of ours; the cotton was dingy and coarsely woven. Then I turned it over and saw the eyeholes cut in the fabric, and bile rose in the back of my throat. I balled the hideous thing up quickly and stuffed it in the pocket of my robe. I would burn it in the stove later.

  “What is it, Mama?”

  “Just an old dirty pillowcase.”

  It was impossible not to picture the scene: the taunting men in their white hoods, the sweating and terrified brown face in their midst. I wondered how many others there had been, and where they’d done it; whether they’d hanged him or killed him some other way. Jamie must have found out about it—that was why he’d been so distraught last night. I wondered if he’d seen what happened. If he’d watched his father murder that poor boy.

  “Is Pappy in heaven now?” asked Bella.

  The old man’s face was expressionless, and his untenanted eyes gave away nothing of what he’d felt in his last moments. I hoped he’d seen Florence coming for him and been afraid; that he’d begged and struggled and known the agony of helplessness, as Ronsel must have. I hoped she’d taken pleasure in killing him, and that it would give her some kind of grim peace to know she’d avenged her son.

  “He’s in God’s hands,” I said.

  “Should we say a prayer for him?” asked Amanda Leigh.

  “Yes, I suppose we should. Come here, both of you. Don’t be scared.”

  They came and knelt on either side of me. Mud from the dirty floor oozed through the thin cotton of my nightgown. I felt a fat plop of water hit my head, then another; the roof was leaking. The girls waited for me to begin, their small, soft bodies pressing into mine from either side. I closed my eyes, but no words came. I would not pray for Pappy’s soul; that would be the worst sort of hypocrisy. I could have prayed for Florence, that God would understand and forgive her a mother’s vengeance, but not in front of the children. And so I was silent. I had no words to give them, or Him.

  A shadow fell across us, and I turned and saw Jamie in the doorway. The light was behind him so I couldn’t see his expression. Bella got up and ran to him, hugging him around the knees. “Pappy’s dead, Uncle Jamie!” she cried.

  “It’s true,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  He picked Bella up and moved to stand at the foot of the bed. He was still in his dirty clothes from the night before, but he’d combed his hair and washed his battered face. There was bitterness in his eyes as he gazed down at his father’s body, and sorrow. I’d expected the one but not the other. It tore at my heart.

  “It looks like he went peacefully, in his sleep,” I lied.

  “That’s how I’d like to go,” Jamie said in a small voice. “In my sleep.”

  He looked down at me then, a look of such tender desolation that I could hardly bear to meet it. I saw a brother’s guilt in that look, but none of the shame or contempt I’d feared to find. Just love and pain and something else I recognized finally as gratitude, for what I’d given him. Gone was the gallant and fearless aviator, the laughing cocksure hero of my imaginings. But even as I mourned his loss, I knew that that Jamie wouldn’t have needed my comfort, or lain with me.

  That Jamie had never really existed.

  The realization stunned me, though it shouldn’t have. He’d given me all the clues I needed to see the weakness at the core of him, and the darkness. I’d ignored them, preferring to believe the fiction. Jamie had created that fiction, acting the part almost to perfection, but I’d been the one who swallowed it whole. I was to blame, for having fallen in love with a figment.

  I loved him still, but there was no longing to it, no heat. Already the memory of our lovemaking was beginning to seem distant, as though it had happened to someone else. I felt strangely empty, without all that carnal furor.

  I think he saw it in my eyes. His own dropped to the floor. He set Bella down and knelt beside me, bending his head. Waiting for me to begin. For the second time, I was at a loss. What honest prayer could I, an adulteress kneeling with my lover beside the body of my hated, murdered father-in-law, possibly offer Him? And then I knew, and I clasped Jamie’s hand in mine and started to sing:

  Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;

  Praise Him, all creatures here below;

  Praise Him above, ye heavenly host:

  Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

  My voice was strong and clear as I sang the familiar words of thanksgiving. The girls joined in at once—the Doxology was the first hymn I’d ever taught them—and then Jamie did as well. His voice was raw, and it splintered on the amen. I found myself thinking that Henry wouldn’t have waited for me to begin. He would have led us in prayer unhesitatingly, and his voice wouldn’t have cracked.

  JAMIE

  THE BIBLE IS FULL of thou-shalt-nots. Thou shalt not kill, that’s one. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor, that’s two. Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife—three and four. Notice how none of them have any loopholes. There are no dependent clauses you can hang your sins on, like: Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife, unless thou art wandering in the blackest hell, lost to yourself and to every memory of light and goodness, and uncovering her nakedness is the only way back to yourself. No, the Bible’s absolute when it comes to most things. It’s why I don’t believe in God.

  Sometimes it’s necessary to do wrong. Sometimes it’s the only way to make things right. Any God who doesn’t understand that can go fuck Himself.

  Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain—that’s five.

  THE DAY AFTER the lynching passed with the slow heaviness of a dream. I hurt everywhere, and I had the mother of all hangovers. I couldn’t stop thinking of Ronsel, of the knife flashing, the blood spurting, the clotted howling that went on and on.

  I took refuge in work. There was plenty of it: the storm had wrecked the chicken coop, peeled half the roof off the cotton house and sent the pigs into a murderous frenzy. Henry hadn’t returned from Greenville yet, but we expected him back any time. I’d gone earlier to check the bridge and found it just barely passable. From the ominous look of the clouds, it wouldn’t stay that way for long. In weather like this Henry would know to hurry home.

  I was in the barn milking when Laura came and found me. Venus hadn’t been milked since the previous morning, and her udders were full to bursting. She’d already punished me for it twice by swatting me in the face with her cocklebur-infested tail. Still, it was good to sit with my cheek against her warm hide, listening to the snare-drum sound of milk hitting the pail, letting the rhythm empty my head.

  “Jamie,” Laura said. I looked up and saw her standing just outside the stall. “Henry will be back soon. We need to talk before he gets here.”

  With some reluctance I left the shelter of the stall and went to her. She had on lipstick, I noticed, but apart from that she was totally
without artifice, probably the only woman I’d ever known who was. That would change now, because of me. I had turned her into a liar.

  “How are the girls?” I asked her.

  “Fine. They’re both asleep. All this has worn them out.”

  “I expect it has. Death is unsettling. Especially the first time you see it.”

  “They wanted to know if you and Henry and I would die someday, and I said we would, a long time from now. Then they asked if they would die. I think it was the first time it ever occurred to them.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth. I don’t think Bella believed me, though.”

  “Good,” I said. “Let her have her immortality while she can.”

  Laura hesitated, then said, “I need to ask you about something.” She pulled a crumpled piece of white cloth from her pocket. Even before I saw the eyeholes I knew what it was. “I found this on the floor of the lean-to. I imagine it belonged to Pappy.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”

  I nodded, the memories exploding like grenades in my head.

  “Tell me what happened, Jamie.”

  I told her. How I’d seen the light near the sawmill and gone over there. How I’d discovered Ronsel with a rope around his neck in a room full of hooded men, my father among them. How I’d broken in on them and tried to get Ronsel out of there. How I’d failed. “I didn’t even fire my gun,” I said.

  “Listen to me,” Laura said. “What happened to that boy isn’t your fault. You tried to save him, which is more than most people would have done. I’m sure Ronsel knew that. I’m sure he appreciated it.”

  “Yeah, I bet he’s just overflowing with gratitude towards me. He probably can’t wait to thank me.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God,” she said, her eyes closing in relief.

  “At least, he was when I left,” I said. And then I told her the first lie: how I’d come to with Sheriff Tacker bending over me, and the others gone, and learned they’d cut out Ronsel’s tongue. Laura’s hand flew to her own mouth. Mine, I remembered, had done the same.