Life is Short But Wide

by J. California Cooper

  He lay across the bed Irene had died in and cried, deep, harsh sounds that men make when they are in pain. Sounds of feelings that came from the bottom of his heart and body. He couldn't stop crying. He finally fell asleep, drained. When he woke during the night his daughters were lying close, one on each side. He placed his arms around them, and fell asleep again, a little comforted. “These are our children. Our flesh.”

  In the morning he found his daughters had quietly crawled out of the bed, covering him with a blanket. He went, slowly, downstairs, and putting his arms around his daughters, he thanked God they had their mother until they were almost grown. They cried, again, together.

  Juliet cried at home, in her mother's arms. She had truly loved her “Aunt” Irene.

  Everyone knew Rose would take her mother's death hard, but they were not as sure about Tante. Tante seemed to keep it inside of herself. They only saw her cry, helplessly, a few times. But they could tell by her swollen face in the mornings that she cried during the nights. The two sisters stood holding hands around their father's back, as he held them close under his arms.

  Val was tired, and showing his age also. The blow of Irene's death had struck him mightily. He had always made sure to hide his weariness from his wife. He didn't like her to worry that he was getting too old to work such long stretches as he did. There was less cattle herding now, and he thought he had two daughters who expected to go to college. He thanked God the house was paid for.

  It was a quiet funeral, many people came from all around the countryside. They brought all types of beautiful wildflowers or blossoming branches of trees. Val didn't know the little school-shack's reputation had reached so many people. He was proud. Some people in Wings's family had come to Irene to learn to read and write also. They came bringing beautiful mementos, flowers, and foods.

  No one knew any of Irene's people to let them know she had passed on. But her husband and daughters grieved very hard. She was buried in a beautifully serene wooded area near Wings's people. “Rest in Peace, dear Wife and Mother” was carved on her small tombstone by Val.

  Then the little family of three went home to plan how to face the future. Val felt he had no future; and he was indeed breaking down. Tante's grief went into her plans; they became more urgent. She must get away before something happened to make her remain in Wideland. Rose would go to speak with the minister, now and then, to ask him to tell her about the heavenly place where her mother was waiting.

  He told her, her mother was waiting in heaven for her family. Tante thought that was untrue. “How does she know where we will go?” She decided her mother was resting and waiting in her grave until the resurrection, as the Bible said she would.

  Tante had somehow managed to get a small scholarship, and she had a little money her family and friends had contributed to her education. She was now preparing to leave for college. She kept her mind directed toward the East. She mulled over Hampton and Howard universities. She finally chose Howard University, smaller then, but already showing evidence of the greatness it would acquire. She was accepted. She had very good scholastic records. She never made less than a B+ in any subject; she worked hard to accomplish that.

  There was no college wardrobe for Tante. She, Rose, Juliet, and Mz. Bertha Smith sewed feverishly, looking at the few magazines Bertha brought from her domestic job for a wealthy mistress. The ladies in the church reached deeply into already empty pockets; they donated several yards of fabric and a good navy-blue, secondhand coat.

  But Tante's looks were clean, fresh, and good enough that the few things she had were the right colors to switch and change around enough to be satisfied. She had to be satisfied. She didn't want to leave her family sad and more broke than they were already.

  Juliet watched from her window, wishing and dreaming that it was herself going off to college, or off to … anywhere.

  The young sisters held each other and their father tightly when Tante was leaving for college. Tante was thinking, “I am going to make my own future!” as the train pulled away from the station and the only people in the world she knew who loved her.

  Val and Rose watched the train pull farther and farther away, until, and even after, it was long out of sight. Then they walked, slowly, away, holding hands. They were silent for awhile, then Rose said to her father, “One by one our family is disappearing from our life, huh, Daddy?”

  He put his arm around her, and patted her shoulder. “There has only been one, Rosie, but such a big empty place she left behind. Life is like that. People go, and some of them come back. Tante will come back, and we still got each other anyhow.” He smiled down at her, but he didn't feel that smile in his heart. He still missed Irene, terribly. The only time he felt comforted was on the reservation, where she was buried.

  He didn't leave his daughter alone that night, but early the next morning, after breakfast, he gave Rose some money, and said he would be back in “a little.” “You'll be alright. Mz. Smith is right across the way, and I'll be here checkin on you. I'm not gone.” Then he was gone … to seek his comfort in the forest, near his wife's grave, with the huge sky full of plump clouds, slowly drifting along like his life.

  His life fell easily back into its old shape. With Wings's family, he was comforted. He walked a long path to Irene's grave every morning, and just sat there awhile. He came back and sat by Wings's door, looking into the multitude of trees, and the vast, unending sky, just thinking. Wings could see his friend was not going home soon. They built him a place of his own and, without anybody realizing it, the new place became Val's home. It cost nothing, and it meant so much comfort. Looking into the sky one day, he thought, “I'm still home.”

  With Wings's help he gradually went back to rustling cattle, less now than before. There was another depression coming on. But he worked. “I have two daughters; one try into go to college, one tryin to keep a house for me. I got to keep makin money. They need money.” He didn't realize that what Rose needed was him.

  I sure remember those times-, I was old enough then to see for myself once my mother got me really interested.

  Rose took over the housecleaning, separating her mother's clothes, crying as she held each piece to give to the poor, and to Mz. Smith to cut down for Juliet. Slowly she settled into the big house as the sole occupant. “Daddy is gonna be here sometime soon. Sometime.” She was surrounded with the remnants of her family, but … they were gone. Only the tears remained.

  She cooked every day. So she always had something cooking for her father when he stopped to see her to give her some money. At first he stayed overnight, but waking in the morning to the sight of the empty bed, and of the closed-in walls, seemed to start his day off wrong. Walls seemed to break his mind down. To be close to life he needed to be out in the open air.

  He always ate something to please Rose, but, soon, he seldom stayed overnight. She complained (she didn't mean to) that he was wasting food she would have to throw out.

  “Give it to the Smiths, Rose. Don't throw nothin away!” He bought her one of the new iceboxes, and signed her up to receive a block of ice once a week. Three cents a block. “Now, save some food for yourself, baby.” He thought she didn't really know how hard times were; but she did know. She thought he didn't know how lonely times were.

  Then, when a few wealthy people of the town put in electricity, she didn't. She still used kerosene lamps and candles. Her water was free. There was always someone to cut wood for her stove and fireplaces, from her own trees. A neighbor passing by in his wagon or Joe Smith.

  As time went by Rose was making her way in life with the help of her father, and a little help from Irene's students. She liked teaching others to read and write. She liked having people near during the day. Sometimes she even thought of marrying, vaguely.

  She had gone back into Tante's room and began to read some of the books there. She would end up lying across Tante's bed reading an afternoon away. She learned things to add to her lessons. She wished now she had
shared more of Tante's activities. She would close a book, thinking, “My, my, my! This world is really something!”

  Val had spoken to her about fixing the shotgun house up to rent it out, and had even done some work on it. It really didn't need much now. Rut Rose was slow to make up her mind. “I use that little house for teaching when I have students. I don't know if I want somebody that close to my house. I like it quiet and peaceful. Whoever I rent it to will probably have children, and I don't want them mixing up in the yard with me. Stealing my eggs, running all over my garden, or killing and frying my chickens for their own self.”

  During the depression Joe Smith's job was paying less and less. What could a colored man say? He was struggling to pay his small rent, and was eyeing the shotgun house, thinking, “Gould I maybe fix it up and Bertha clean it up? Miss Rose might jes let us move in it, then she won't be out here by herself. I can do nough work round here to even us up on the rent.” But he was a shy man, and didn't mention it to Rose or Bertha.

  Joe just continued on his weary, worried way to the lumberyard, with his dull brown eyes set in their reddened whites, staring ahead of him looking at everything, seeing nothing. He was looking for something he could find, fix, and sell.

  He hung around the lumberyard waiting for some work. For a long time now, since the depression had come, his hours were fewer, and his pay much less. He thought, “Depression sposed to be over, but it sho ain't gone from round heah yet.”

  The depression years were slow, and hard on everyone. Farmers, laborers, electricians, auto makers, everyone suffered because no one had any money. Harder on some coloreds because when it came to hiring, other colors came first.

  Even liquor bootleggers were barely getting by. Since the Wall Street crash in 1929, even the rich were having a harder time of life, but most of them were going to make it out all right. The poor people thanked God for Roosevelt's New Deal that helped them survive. Sometimes you had to travel to get to the New Deal, and Joe Smith was almost an old man. “I cain't leave my Bertha and Juliet with jes nothin, even if I'm goin some-where's to try to get somethin!”

  Val, who had been a sad man a long time, finally gave up trying to live on, and died. It was an unexpected hard blow to Rose; she was miserable. She cried a vale of tears; wretched despair was her daily misery. At night she screamed aloud at God in her grief, in that empty, empty house.

  Wings could not help her; he was in despair, agonized and sickened by Val's death. To focus his mind he wanted to carve the headstone and dig the grave. He wanted to bury Val right next to Irene in the same wooded sanctuary that was full of birds and other live things that Val had loved. He wanted Val near his own grave. He was not superstitious, he was just used to his friend being near him.

  Wings had found Val's savings in a can in the feather case Val had used for a pillow. He took it to Rose, gladly, for his brother-friend.

  Rose didn't know how Tante found out because in her personal grief she had forgotten Tante. Tante sent a message through the Wideland newspaper office that she was coming home for the funeral. That helped Rose so much she was able to stop crying all through the days and nights.

  She knew Tante could not afford the trip, and it would take at least two or three days on the bus. She informed the minister the funeral would be held in Val's own parlor. “His body can lie there as long as it has to. This is his home.”

  People came by to view the body as Rose sat at Val's feet. When the body began to smell slightly, Rose still sat there, un-worried, unfazed.

  •

  Rose cleaned Tante's room and the rest of the house, then sat back down to wait. “I must think of what to feed Tante while she is home.” Rose knew her father had been sending Tante some money each month to help her. “That's what must'a killed him, all the strain of looking after us!”

  She would be ashamed of such thoughts for a while, then the thoughts would break through again, “She must be through with college now! She can come on home and help me with this place!” A little light flickered in her brain. “We can have two grades in school! I'll get that shotgun house ready for a real school for us to teach in!”

  Rose had not forgotten her father had just died. She was no less grieved, stressed, depressed, and miserable. She just realized there was still a future, that life was not over, it goes on. With her arms resting on the kitchen table, she rested her head on them and cried again, dry sobs. She felt, almost, all alone in the world.

  Tante finally arrived amid all the doings, and Reverend Smoke preached the funeral of Val. He kept his little greedy eyes on the front-row chairs where the bereaved daughters of Val sat. After he got them crying real hard, and everybody moaning and sniffling, he quieted his preaching down. They laid Val's coffin in the wagon that Wings had brought to fetch him. Val's daughters climbed onto the wagon and rode away with Wings, to bury their beloved father next to their dearly beloved mother.

  Later, after they returned to their house, Tante began to pack to go back to university and to work. Rose was outdone, feeling abandoned. She cried and begged and pleaded for Tante to stay home with her.

  Tante sat Rose in a chair, and put her arm around her. She leaned close to her sister, whom she loved, and said, “Rose, I am not you. I am not through doing what I have to do for myself. I have a master's degree. I want a doctorate. I know what I am doing with my life.

  “Wideland is not my life. Now, you? You must decide for yourself. You can sell whatever property is here. I don't care. It's yours. I give you my half. I will get my own for myself. I wouldn't sell it right now though; prices are too low. Prices are not going to stay low as they are now; I'm watching the stock market, and every day I read several newspapers.

  “Hold this land awhile, while you decide just what you want to do with your life. Then do whatever that is! Because that is what I am going to do.” Tante stood up to finish packing, saying, “I am going to try to get the money to have a telephone put in this house for you so you can reach me and I can reach you whenever there is an emergency.”

  Rose's eyes were wide open. She couldn't believe her ears, that her sister was saying these things. She couldn't believe her sister was leaving her again. Her heart sobbed, “Here, alone; all by myself.”

  Tante pulled her sister to her breast, saying, “You have to be an adult about your life now. You are a grown woman. If you have a dream, try to work toward that dream; if you don't have a dream, you need to look around you, see what you do have, then work to keep it in the best way possible. You must like it here, you've never tried to leave. Rent that little house out, and keep teaching. I'll do what I can for you, but the facts are I am working on my dreams. I won't have much to send. Life takes everything you have to keep going on. And I mean to keep going with my life.”

  They walked together to the train station, and Rose waited for the train to come take her sister away. She watched her sister leaving her. Life's pain had filled her heart til it had near broken it. But, this time, she didn't cry.

  Rose was used to her father and other cowboys. She knew how to cuss. She thought to herself, “I'm tired of all this leaving shit.”

  Rose Strong went home to think.

  For weeks Preacher Smoke had been telling different members of the congregation, “I'm worried bout that Rose out there in that big ole house all by herself! I'm gonna start checkin up on her; see is she doin alright!” The congregation was glad because they were mostly too busy trying to work and survive. Except Bertha, she checked every day.

  The preacher lived in two small rooms at the back of the church. He had no wife. The congregation fed him every Sunday, but, naturally, being the man he was, he wanted more, needed more. He had, secretly, wooed a few of the women in the church. The ones he knew were alone and lonely. He stood for a god to them, so naturally they gave in to him.

  He never brought anything with him, food nor money, and times were hard, so they couldn't always feed him. But giving him some loving, his secret favorite thing, was
easy. Besides, they needed some their own selves.

  But Preacher Smoke didn't know how to do his secret favorite thing too well. It wasn't his size, because size doesn't make the man. He just wouldn't have known what to do with any size “down there.” Soon the ladies began to pull back, and fly from his reach. He had a few who were older, lonely sisters he ate with, but he didn't want them. They smelled of assifidity and cheap soap.

  So, the next couple of weeks he did stop by Rose's house in the evenings, to see how she was and if she needed anything. He had nothing to give her, and nothing to do there, except maybe kill a spider if there was one there at the time, but he stopped by the house to check and see anyway.

  People with families were moving into town. There were other young men in Wideland now. Some of them called upon her, or just stopped by to see if there was anything they could do for her. She didn't need Preacher Smoke. In fact, away from the church or a funeral, she never thought of him.

  But he thought of her. A great deal. As he lay back in his cot, one hand under his head, eyes looking through the dark at the ceiling, other hand on his crotch, he thought of her. “She such a childlike little lady. I know she got confidence in me. I can see it in them soft eyes a'hers. She real gentle, too, got that soft voice. Young, smooth skin. Got a full body; woman's body, plump, but pleasin. She pretty! She do look like a rose, soft and gentle and, Lord … she lonely too. She ain't got nobody else! Up there in that big ole house all by hersef! It's my duty, as a man of God, to do my duty and answer her call.”

  One Sunday, as he preached, he looked down to the front-row seats, and looked directly into the eyes of Rose. When he held her eyes with his own, she blushed, embarrassed, and turned her eyes away. He thought, happily, “That's what girls do when they love you! She really fallin in love wit' me!”