Bonaventure listened to the wind singing through the sweetgum and sassafras, the prickly ash and hickory, and tried to absorb their tree-songs through his skin. And just to make sure he wouldn’t lose that music, he plucked a leaf from each one to put in his wagon and carry back to Christopher Street.
Trinidad began to dig.
“This be a whole lot of healing we digging up today, Mr. Bonaventure. A whole lot of healing,” she said.
—Okay! Bonaventure said, by way of making a circle with the thumb and index finger of his right hand and giving her a wink.
Thready roots snapped as they were tugged from the earth, and bits of loamy soil pattered to the ground. One by one, and with the greatest of tender motions, Trinidad placed plants in the bottom of Bonaventure’s wagon very close to the carved wooden box. The two of them worked in quiet companionship until the sun had moved beyond its greatest height.
“That be enough now,” Trinidad said, and led the way to the small barn back of the house.
As his eyes adjusted to the shadowy interior, Bonaventure noticed thin lines of sunlight filtering through the boards of the walls and imagined he could feel them touch him and fracture apart as he walked into dusky dimness. Their splintering sounded like the pinging of raindrops, which pleased him through and through.
Trinidad began to shake out the harvest and hang it from twine strung diagonally for that purpose.
“These here be what called simples,” she told Bonaventure. “They get they start in the dark of the earth, and then they reach for the light.”
This trajectory reminded Bonaventure of his black and white stone and how he’d found it buried in the garden.
“The simples be wild herbs, and they be for tea and poultice and chew.” She touched the brown leaves and went on. “Some folks, they use the simples like poisons, but that not what God intended at all. The simples is supposed to be used for good. Take this one here now; it be witch hazel and good for the skin. And this one here with the tiny pink buds on it, that comfrey. It be used to knit up flesh and bones.”
Bonaventure reached toward another plant, a question in his eyes.
“Don’t touch that one, child; it be stinging nettle. Stinging nettle good for the gout.”
Finger point, raised brows. —And this one?
“Yarrow. It for the toothache.”
—How do you know all these things? Bonaventure communicated this question by sweeping his arm to encompass the hanging herbs, then holding his hands out palms up and shrugging.
“I knows some of it from my mama, but only some. She didn’t fix on the notion that simples be meant for healing. She had a fear in her that made her think they only be used for harm.”
Index fingers pulled down the sides of his mouth in a sad face.
“Don’t I know it, Mr. Bonaventure. Don’t I know it. All’s we can do now is ask the Lord to forgive her.”
A very solemn nod.
With their bounty hung to dry, they returned to the house to wash the dirt from their hands and eat one more biscuit with butter and jam. When it was time to go, Bonaventure took the carved wooden box from the wagon and regarded it solemnly. He opened it gently, removed Dancy’s note and Grand-mère’s pieces of stuck-together glass and set them on the table. Then he removed the speckled stone from his pocket and set it down alongside them. He felt he’d best leave the stone with Trinidad, a woman he associated with the seraphim angels, the ones Grand-mère liked to talk about, the ones that were closest to God.
Trinidad accepted the offering entrusted her, in silence, as was appropriate.
Bonaventure set off then, the empty carved box and the sounds of simples filling his father’s childhood wagon all the way up to the brim.
Those Things She Found Spiritual
WHEN she could no longer see Bonaventure’s small back heading down the Neff Switch road, Trinidad picked up the note, the prisms, and the stone and went into her front room to kneel before a small altar upon which rested those things she found spiritual: a plaster-of-Paris Virgin Mary, three red feathers of a Shanghai rooster, and pieces of sea glass worn smooth as silk by lapping waves of salty water. There was also a rabbit’s foot, a pouch filled with catmint, and the rosary of fine wooden beads so recently given her by Miz Arrow, senior.
From the time she’d awakened that morning, Trinidad Prefontaine knew one thing for sure: this day held a promise in its hands. She laid the note and the prisms on her homemade altar amidst those symbols and souvenirs of her deity’s Spirit, the Blessed Mother who loved every single child: the sea glass, like pieces of broken lives made lustrous and baptized by the ocean’s healing waters; the feathers of a bird that can fly precious little yet proclaims the new hope of every day’s dawn; and those odd little bits of nature’s bounty. From her pocket she pulled a holy card, one given to her in the orphanage by Sister Sulpice. The card was soft as a piece of old leather, made so by the oils in the skin of Trinidad’s hands. The front bore a picture of Francis of Assisi, and printed on the back were the words to his Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Her lips moved silently over the words of the prayer until the very end, when she spoke them loud and sincerely:
Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth,
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Then she returned the card to her pocket.
Like Mam Judith, Sister Sulpice had been a kind of prophet. Mam Judith had spoken of Trinidad’s Purpose and Knowing, and Sister Sulpice had seen by what means they would be made manifest.
Trinidad placed the note and the prisms upon her altar and then she placed there one thing more: the silence of Bonaventure Arrow, contained as it was in the smooth, round, black and white speckled stone. The stone was heavier than she’d expected it to be, maybe because it carried the weight of so much more. Indeed, that stone carried the secret sorrows so recently removed from Letice’s chapel and Dancy’s closet. And it held too William’s undead longing, the weight of Calypso’s fearful superstitions, the vengeful anger of Suville Jean-Baptiste, the rancorous madness of The Wanderer, and the lonely delusions of Eugenia Babbitt.
Trinidad pulled her hand away, closed her eyes, and bowed her head in an attitude of prayer until a warming came over her. Then she opened her eyes to see a ribbon of light rise up from the speckled stone. It shimmered and spread itself over the Canticle and across the note and the prisms as well. The light covered the fear; it brightened the longing; it whitened the anger, bleaching it to nothingness. All sorrow was soothed until there was only a small whimpered crying that softened to sighing, that floated forever and ever away, fading along with the speckled stone’s light.
Several other things happened in that instant: Bonaventure heard bup-bup, bup-bup; Dancy found herself thinking about Gabe Riley; and Letice felt the smallest brush on her cheek like the feel of a baby’s kiss.
Once back home, Bonaventure put the box back in its niche and pressed the simples between the pages of a book.
At supper that night, Grand-mère invited everyone to go to mass with her the next day. “It’s the Feast of Saint Bonaventure,” she said.
THE Wanderer stopped eating and drinking, for all he could do was think. He thought until his sanity returned, and with it the memory of what he had done. The recollection torched him everywhere; he could hardly breathe through the pain. The muscles of his face stayed twisted into knots, tight and painful and full of remorse.
Bonaventure could hear The Wanderer’s regret. It made the sound of burned skin that cannot scab over because it is too far gone.
One of Us Here Knows the Rules: July 19, 1957
VENTURE Forth Arrow, we gotta get going. It’s gonna be a busy day; I got two perms and a bleach job and nobody should have to sit through all that, least of all you, since you’ll be stuck with Grandma Roman tomorrow.”
Bonaventure winced.
“And speaking of Grandma Roman, pretty soon w
e’ll all be suffering the great misfortune of having to hear about those Meetings of the Big-Ass Righteous. Unfortunately, there’s two gonna be going on tomorrow, and she’ll be screaming her head off, hounding God for what she wants. She keeps looking for a miracle even though we don’t need one. That woman could send me right off the deep end, I swear. Anyway, you better go outside and play while you still got the chance.”
And that right there was one of the many reasons Bonaventure loved his mother so much: she was plain downright considerate.
“Be back by eleven,” she hollered as the screen door slammed. “Sooner if ya miss me.”
Over at the post office, the air around Adelaide Roman was fairly charged with a crackling static that radiated from her fingertips and gathered in a nimbus that glowed around her head. Something big was going to happen tomorrow, something really big, and it would all be thanks to her. She loved the sensation of power that was rushing through her body; sometimes she just wanted to squeal, she was so wound up.
Near the end of the workday, when Adelaide was lost in this mental ecstasy, Trinidad walked through the door of the post office, stepped up to where Adelaide stood behind the counter, and set a letter down. It was quarter to five.
Adelaide acted as if she was busy, fiddling with this set of keys and that rubber stamp, picking through paper clips, and sorting out pens until Mrs. Louella Stempley came through the door.
Adelaide craned her neck enough to look behind Trinidad and say, “Hey, there, Louella, what can I do for you today?”
Louella Stempley said, “Go on and finish there, Adelaide. I’m not in any hurry.”
“That’s fine. I’m done here. Come on, now, step up and let me see whatcha got.”
Mrs. Stempley looked questioningly toward Trinidad, who gave a gracious nod and stepped a bit to the side. “All’s I got is this one letter, but I couldn’t find my stamps. I’da swore I had some in my purse, but I guess not—must be getting old and senile.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here for, Louella, to sell stamps to the feeble-minded,” said Adelaide, laughing at her joke.
Louella Stempley bought her stamps and left. It was so quiet in the post office that Trinidad could hear the soft tick of the clock’s second hand every time it moved. It was now seven minutes before five. Adelaide ambled about, organizing her cash drawer, bending to tie her shoe, and straightening up to put some hand lotion on.
“Good Afternoon, Mrs. Roman,” Trinidad said. “I would like to buy a stamp, please.”
“Is that right?” Adelaide sneered.
Trinidad froze. Had she missed the sign that said for whites only? No, there wasn’t one. Bayou Cymbaline was a peculiarity in the South, never adhering to Jim Crow laws.
“I’ll need to see some identification,” Adelaide said.
“I’m sorry? Identification? What kind do you need, and why?”
“I’ll need to see a valid driver’s license or a social security card, either one—or a birth certificate, that’ll work too.”
“But I don’t drive and I don’t have those other things with me.”
Three minutes to five.
Adelaide turned Trinidad’s letter around to look at the addressee. “Who’s Mrs. Virgil B. Horton?” she asked.
“She was my employer back in Pascagoula,” Trinidad responded.
“What is it you’re sending her?”
“I don’t believe that is any of your business, Mrs. Roman.”
Adelaide Roman’s lips pressed into a thin line. She took a breath and hissed, “One of us here works for the United States Post Office and knows the rules. I think it’s me. What do you think? Now I’m gonna ask you one more time. What are you sending to this Mrs. Virgil B. Horton?”
Trinidad did not answer.
“Must be something you think you gotta hide.”
And then when the clock struck five Trinidad experienced the Knowing. She picked up her letter; there was no urgency to mailing it. Next week would be just fine. She stepped away from the counter, turned, and made her way to the door.
“You wash your hands real good when you touch my family’s food,” Adelaide hollered after her. “And don’t be drinking from their cups or putting their forks in your mouth. You hear me?”
Trinidad heard most clearly.
At 5:02 Adelaide stuffed a letter into her pocket. She felt more strongly than ever that it was her duty to monitor the mail and intercept anything she felt was suspicious. She could do no less for the Lord her God or for Harley John. She had never forgotten Pastor Eacomb’s sermon in which he’d preached to his flock that the downright possessed moved among them. Why, she could even remember his exact words: “You must find those who are flawed and bring God’s perfection to them.”
She snapped closed her purse, turned off the light, and locked the post office door. She could hardly stand having to wait for the Meeting of the Righteous, but she had to get through one more night. Adelaide had plans for passing the evening.
Once home, she threw the deadbolt and lowered the shades. Then she took out that letter she had stuffed in her pocket; it was addressed to a man in Port Arthur, Texas. She didn’t open the letter right away; she just ran her fingers over it and occasionally touched a corner of it to her lips, as if engaging in an odd kind of foreplay. She didn’t want the titillation to be over too soon, so she put the envelope down and forced her thoughts over to Mr. Donald Tipton, the pharmacist at Charbonneau’s Drug Store.
Adelaide had been monitoring his mail, and she thought she was onto something: Mr. Tipton had been receiving parcels at his P.O. Box; one such parcel had arrived that day. Adelaide sat musing for a while and then struck up a one-sided conversation with the African violet that sat on a plastic doily in the middle of her dinette table.
“Miss Vi,” she began. “It certainly was a day at the Bayou Cymbaline Post Office, let me tell you. Mercy sakes alive I would venture to say that I believe there has never been one like it. No, sir, I truly do not. For one thing, that nigger woman who works for Mrs. Rich Bitch Letice Arrow had the gall to come into the post office and step right up to my window; then she sets a letter down and acts like I should drop everything and get her a stamp just like she was white. That’s nerve, Miss Vi. That is some uppity nerve. I showed her, though. I run out the clock and there wasn’t a blue-bellied thing she could do about it. You can just bet I showed her.
“But that’s enough about Miss High and Mighty Field Hand. Just what do you suppose it could be that comes through the United States mail every now and again addressed to Mr. Donald Tipton?”
She paused then, letting suspense tingle up her arms.
“What could it possibly be that arrives in a brown paper wrapper? If I had to guess, I’d say it had to be a book, which doesn’t seem like much, but a body has to wonder why anyone has to order a book through the United States mail when there’s a public library over on Cavalier Street that is busting at the seams. But here’s the real thing I got to wonder about, Miss Vi: this parcel for Mr. Donald Tipton that arrived today come exactly thirty days after the first one. I know it’s been thirty days cuz that first one come the day after Miss Slattery died from whatever was eating up her insides.
“I have to ask myself if maybe there’s something illegal going on, something Mr. Donald Tipton doesn’t want anybody to know about. He’s an odd bird, you know. Never been married, no relatives hereabout. I think I better keep an eye on Mr. Donald Tipton is what I think.
“I know that it’s suppertime and we should be enjoying some cold chicken and three-bean salad and lemonade and strawberry pie, but there’s something else happened today that we should talk about, Miss Vi, something else that has to do with said Mr. Donald Tipton. See, this strange man comes sauntering through the door about noon. I remember it was noon because my stomach was yowling louder than the church bells over to that heathen Catholic Church. Anyway, here comes this man, all fancied up with shiny hair combed back like William Powell. You know, Mr. Powe
ll from the movies? And bold as you please, this fellow with the pomaded hair swaggers right up to my window and asks me, do I know where he might find Charbonneau’s Drug Store. Now, what do you make of that, Miss Vi? I’ll tell you what I make of it. I think our pharmacist, Mr. Donald Tipton, is one of those homosexuals. And I think he’s got himself in some homo book club and this man with the hair pomade is a homo, too, and they’ve managed to make a connection. Well, we’ll just see, won’t we, Miss Vi? We’ll just see.”
But Donald Tipton wasn’t the only subject of Adelaide Roman’s scrutiny. She had been following the correspondence that was going on between that snippy Vida van Demming, who thought she was better than anybody else, and her pen pal from Port Arthur, Texas, a Mr. Harold Hopkins. Vida’s letters had been coming and going every week for quite some time. Adelaide found them boring at first, kind of flat, just a lot of stuff about the weather, weekend plans, and bits and pieces of local news. But lately the man’s letters had a taken on a distinctly romantic tone: “What color are your eyes?” he’d asked, and “Do you think you could send a picture of yourself? You must be lovely.” After that, Adelaide started to keep an eye peeled for Vida, who always came into the post office to drop her letters to Port Arthur in the outgoing slot. More often than not, they hardly made it to the pile before Adelaide snatched them up.
Adelaide had got around to that letter she’d stuffed in her pocket. “Now what I got here, Miss Vi, is a piece of correspondence,” and she carefully opened the purloined letter. “Oh, Lordy, Vi, this is what you might say is something of a serious nature,” and she kept licking her lips as she read. “Just listen to what Vida van Demming writes to her Romeo over in Port Arthur. You’re not going to believe this, Miss Vi.” She read the letter aloud:
Dear Harold,
You say that you are starting to have feelings for me, and I think it’s time you know that I am starting to have feelings for you too, but before things get even more serious, I have a confession to make. Before we started our correspondence, my life felt empty all the time, like there was nothing to look forward to and every day was just like the one before. I always thought that if I could forgo Bayou Cymbaline for some place more exciting, I would be a happy person. But I couldn’t leave. I was afraid to. Then one day I went into Claymore’s Gift & Candy Emporium and I stuck a pack of Necco Wafers up my sleeve and left the store. I am ashamed to say it now, but it was the most exciting thing I had ever done. I went back to the store later and returned them, but the truth is that I continued stealing and returning things. I only just stopped when I found you. I hope you can understand that I know what I did was wrong and that I am sorry from the bottom of my heart. I also hope with all my heart that your feelings for me have not changed, but if they have, I would understand.
The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow Page 27
