He was handsome in the way that other women found men to be handsome—big, husky, tall, much taller than Buford, and with pretty skin—though Mamie, to be honest, had been expecting something else.
It was his age. He was so young. She figured maybe twenty-five, and here she was in her midthirties. But there he was at her aunti’s door with the early-morning sun coming up behind him (the sun being the symbol of the Angel Beautiful), and not asking to see her aunti, but to see her, Mamie Culpepper.
He had his hat in his hands and his head was bowed in gentlemanly greeting. His reddish-brown hair was slicked back on his head in the style of the day, but she saw no signs of pomade in it—his hair was naturally fine-textured. He was one of those mixed boys. When he lifted his head again, it was done slowly, deliberately, so that he could take in the full measure of her. Mamie felt only a slight embarrassment at his inspection of her because she had been expecting the Lord to deliver and thus put on her best dress, the yellow one, and best shoes, the ones with the unbroken straps. She had combed her lustrous hair into submission and tied her prettiest kerchief over it (the yellow one). The young man smiled in approval and then set his face for serious courting.
He said to her, “You are a vision of loveliness this fine morning, Sister Culpepper, I must say, and it behooves a good Christian man such as myself to inform you of how happy I am to serve a Lord and Savior who blesses the world with flowers and birds and pretty smiles such as yours.”
Mamie couldn’t help but blush. Nevertheless she said to him, “Thank you, kind sir. Now it behooves a good Christian woman such as myself who has many important errands to run on this fine day, which the Lord has given us, to ask the young man to state his business plain out so that she might get to her appointed tasks.”
He responded with nervous gestures, as his confidence was slightly shaken by her directness—he bit his bottom lip and folded and unfolded the brim of his hat, which was still in his two hands in front of him. “Well,” he said, “My name is—”
“I know who you are, Jefferson Cooper. You’re from one of them islands down there.”
“Yes. Jamaica,” he stammered.
“You’ve got two last names for a name.”
“Well, my middle name is Thomas.”
“That’s a last name too.”
“But you can call me Jeff,” he said with a wink. “Well, as you know I work as a—”
“I know what you do. I’ve seen you pick fruit. You’re fast.”
He beamed. “Thank you.”
“The rest of us can’t hardly make a living you’re so fast.”
He lowered his eyes to his spit-polished shoes and stylized spats. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
“I’ve seen you at the tent, and I’ve heard you preach.”
“You’ve heard me preach,” he said, lifting his eyes again. His chest swelled with pride. He said to her confidently, because he knew he was a good preacher—all of the girls who were trying to get their hooks in him loved his preaching: “So you like my preaching, huh?”
“I’ve heard better.”
Cooper stumbled backward, then regained his stance and his composure. He said, smiling—O but she did love his smile: “Well, kind lady, my business is with you, if you must know. Now if I could have a glass of cold water on this good morning—”
“You came to my house so early in the morning for water, Cooper? Is that your business?”
“Well, ma’am, no. But I could sure use a glass of cold water to wet my throat, then I’ll set down and state to you my business plain. Would you be so kind, ma’am? And call me Jeff. Or Jefferson, if you prefer.”
Mamie was beginning to doubt the Lord. This is the one, this fidgeting boy? He had on a dark jacket and a white shirt, but no tie. He had a red rose pinned to the lapel of his jacket. She said to the young Jefferson Cooper, “Boy, what are you doing here all dressed up for? What do you want from me?”
From behind her she heard Aunti, coughing her harsh morning cough and asking, “Mamie, what’s all that racket so early in the morning? Who you talking to outside?”
Mamie turned and shouted back, “Nobody. Go back to sleep, Aunti.”
Aunti coughed again. “What man you out there talking to, Mamie? That the insurance man? That Reverend Morrisohn?”
Now she could hear the squeaking of springs as Aunti was getting out of bed to come see what all was going on. Mamie stepped outside the door and closed it behind her, and then she took the young Jefferson Cooper by the hand and hurried him away from the small wooden box she called a house. No way was she ready for gossips like her aunti to start piecing together rumors about her and Jefferson Cooper until she was sure that he was the one the Lord had sent.
She had his hand and she was pulling him down the dirt road to the Piggly Wiggly’s, which had a porch, which she avoided because it was too public.
Not us on the porch, no way. Not yet. There will come a time for porches if he is indeed the one.
She took him to the alley behind the Piggly Wiggly’s. When she got there, she backed him up against the wall and got right up in his face. He smelled good too, like two whole bouquets of flowers. “Now, Cooper, you know I’m not a young woman, so I’ve got no time for games. I’m tired of asking you why you came to my house this morning and you beating around the bush. So let’s just get down to it. You tell me if the Lord sent you. You tell me if you—” but she could not finish.
Now it was she who was losing her confidence.
Here she was in the alley behind the Piggly Wiggly’s with this handsome, well-dressed, fine-smelling young man and about to ask him if he loved her and they hadn’t said but maybe a dozen words to each other since he came to town about a year ago and started preaching and picking and she was pregnant for a married man and soon to be found out and the Lord had to help her out of this mess—He just had to, He just had to. But how could she ask a man who was practically a stranger whether he loved her when she still loved Buford?
Feeling guilt ridden and dishonest as the lyingest liar, she backed away from Cooper with her head bowed.
“If I what?” he said to her.
“If nothing.”
When she looked up, he had that beautiful smile on his face again. He still had his hat in his hands. He was such a big, humble, goodlooking young gentleman. She wouldn’t mind having a son like him, but a husband? He said to her, “If I what, Sister Culpepper?”
She sighed. This was not going to work. She waved him off. “It was just something I had in my head is all, Cooper. Go your way.” She made a move as if to leave the alley.
He cleared his throat and stood up straighter and blocked her exit with his big body. “Well,” he said, “I do know that you’re the only woman around here who’s worth anything.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m on fire for the Lord. These girls around here, they’re looking for husbands. They’ll tell a man anything. But I’ve been watching you since I came.” He smiled his handsome smile. “I must tell you, kind lady, I think you’re beautiful.” Then he quickly added, “And you are on fire for the Lord.”
Mamie put her hands on her stout hips. “Beautiful?” At the entrance to the alley, she could see that the small town of Goulds was waking up now. There were cars and bicycles bustling about. She saw an open-top army car roll past with two white soldiers in it. An old brown and black lop-eared mutt entered the alley and trotted up to them, his tail wagging, his mouth open, begging food. Mamie shushed him away and the old mutt trotted off with his tail between his legs. She said to Cooper’s sparkling eyes, “We need to go somewhere to talk, young man,” and she took his hand and led him out of the alley.
Aunti was on the porch of their house, leaning over the wooden rail talking to Old Black Spensser, the milkman and all-purpose fix-it man. Aunti spotted Mamie and Cooper and waved them over, but Mamie waved back at her—no—and led Cooper down the road in the opposite direction, to Main Street,
which was the only partially paved road in town.
There was a filling station and a general merchandise store owned by the Andersons, who were first cousins of the Harbaughs. The Andersons had a little sweet shop set up in the back, where they served breakfast to the colored soldiers and to the colored and Mexican laborers who worked the groves. It was out of sight from the main road, which offered the privacy Mamie sought, and it was cozy, so she led Cooper there.
He pulled out one of the wooden chairs for her, and she sat down, then he sat down. Manners too, she thought, smiling despite herself.
She said, batting her eyes like a coquet, “Now what is this I hear about you being in love with me, Cooper?”
His mouth fell open. “In love?”
“Yes.”
He set his hat on the table. She watched as he struggled to regain his composure, through musing and a great deal of eyebrow furrowing. The young man was clearly thinking it through. Much to her surprise and satisfaction, he said, “Well, I must say that you are a direct one. But it is interesting. You do have all the qualities that I desire in a Christian woman. You are beautiful, you are close to God, and you’ve been watching me since I got here.”
“No such thing, Cooper!” she retorted, attempting to trip him up again as she had at her door earlier. She enjoyed watching him stumble. She found it endearing, a man so off-balance in her presence. It made her feel beautiful. Maybe he was the one. At any rate, she was having her fun with him. She was enjoying his attention. She discovered that she quite enjoyed being spiteful. This flirting business, it was so against her nature, but she took right to it.
“Well now,” Cooper said, clearing his throat. He had beautiful hands, except for a scab on his right one from some field-related injury which he picked at absentmindedly with his left thumbnail. “Well now. I heard that you have been watching me with interest.”
“Who would tell you such a thing, sir?” She shook her head, tut-tutting.
“You haven’t been watching me?”
“No. I am on fire for the Lord, sir. I don’t have time to be watching men,” Mamie said with a pout. She had seen other women pout when flirting with men, and so she pouted now because she had always secretly wanted to. But when Cooper gave her a strange look, she figured that it was the pout that was inappropriate at this point and so she stopped doing it. She regretted that she had such little experience in these matters, such little experience as a flirt.
“It’s interesting,” Cooper mused. “You are well spoken of. You are well admired. You do the Lord’s will. You are beautiful—”
“You said that one already.”
He kept picking at the scab as he counted off her attributes, each of which she smugly agreed with. “You are beautiful. You are sensible. You are virtuous. You are chaste—I have never seen you in the company of any man, and everyone speaks highly of your character.” He nodded at her.
She continued to eye him, but with less coquettish fervor and less high-mindedness. Chaste. Too late for that one, she thought sadly. “Go on, Cooper. State your case. I am listening.”
“I know that some say I am too young to be seeking a wife—there, I’ve said it—I am seeking a wife, and I don’t have time for games either, Sister Culpepper.” He stopped talking as he lifted a white silk handkerchief from an inside coat pocket and dabbed at his forehead, drying the beads of sweat that had appeared there. He replaced the handkerchief and went back to speaking and agitating the horrible little scab. “I came by your house this morning to begin a proper courtship of you, if you will have me, in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord. The Lord is calling me to build a church, and I need an help meet to be at my side. Someone with the courage to do what the Lord asketh us to do.”
“An help meet,” she said.
So there it was. There was the offer. She would be an help meet. She would be his wife. It sounded like the Lord, but was it?
She looked him over. He looked to be twenty-five. Twenty-six? That wasn’t too bad. She asked him straight out, “Just how old are you, Cooper?”
“I’ll be twenty in December.”
Mamie rose in high-minded outrage from her seat. She would not be made a fool of. Oh the gossips of Goulds would love that one. Old Mamie done took up with a little, bitty boy. “Mr. Cooper,” she announced, “it was good talking to you, but I do believe that this attempt at courtship is over. You’re just too young.”
He put up a finger. “Don’t let my age fool you, Sister Mamie. I’ve lived many lifetimes in my twenty years.”
“Nineteen,” she corrected.
Cooper was unperturbed. He did not rise from his seat. He said, “Sarah was ninety when she got pregnant for Abraham.”
Mamie said, “I’m not old as Sarah. What, you think I’m ninety? Shame on you to talk like that to a lady.” Pouting. Prettily.
Cooper gave her his handsome smile in honor of the appropriateness of her pout. Despite herself, she was pleased to have pouted appropriately at last.
He said, “I serve the Lord today because He saved me from a life of shame and degradation. If it wasn’t for the Lord, I’d be dead. There are nine of us in our family. I am the oldest child. I left home and joined the merchant marines at the age of thirteen so that I could send money back to my mother. We never lived good back home because Daddy is a drunkard and a gambler, who begged more bread in his life than he ever earned. He has seven more outside children that we know of. At fourteen, I was a mess boy on an oil tanker running the sea-lanes to England and France and Italy. The pay was good. I had enough money to send home to my blessed mother and enough to keep me in much drink and mischief. I got to see the world. It’s a pretty big place. It’s a pretty beautiful place, Praise God. But life is hard for a seaman, especially when you’re colored. The sea is unforgiving and so are the white men you work with. I learned to defend myself. At the age of seventeen, I killed a man.”
Mamie was aghast, but intrigued. A murderer.
Cooper urged gently, “Sit down, Sister Mamie,” and it seemed to her that the presence of the Lord was upon him and she did as she was told. She sat down and she listened as he completed his narrative.
“From the moment he set eyes on me, this fellow, a big bearded Swedish man, he hated me. He rode me night and day attacking the quality of my work, calling me ugly black bastard, calling me shiftless and lazy. I took it all from him. I took it all, because I didn’t want any trouble. I even stayed away from the card games that we would have at night. I took to drinking more. One night, the Swede seemed to have had a change of heart. He stuck his head in the cabin, which I was sharing with two other colored boys, and he invited me to the game that night. He said they were short a player and he’d heard I was a good card player and a good fellow. Well, this surprised me as well as the two fellows I was rooming with because he used to ride them as much as he rode me. So I went into his cabin, where they were supposedly having the game, but nobody was there yet. So he and I were just sitting around when he started to ask these questions about my accent, where I was from, what life was like for me growing up in the islands. Things like that. So I answered him and we talked like that for a while. Next thing I knew, the Swede had gotten up and attempted to perform an abominable act on me. I pushed him off. He got angry and began calling me names that challenged my manhood. The devil got ahold of me and I took a swing at him. He swung back. We went at it then, grappling in the room, knocking over the card table that was set up for the game. He outweighed me by at least fifty pounds, but I was younger and quicker. I soon got the better of him. Instead of surrendering, he pulled out a knife and lunged at me, cutting me right here.”
Cooper opened his coat and lifted out the tail of his shirt to reveal the long scar that ran from his third rib down into his pants, like black railroad tracks on his apple cider skin.
He explained, “It goes down almost to my knee. He got me good. But I had a knife too. Before he could lunge again, I had pulled out my knife and gutted him like a f
ish. There’s nothing else to say about it. He fell back on his bed and died. It was that easy. Then his cabin door opened and the other seven players showed up and caught me with my knife in this guy’s guts. I tried to explain what had happened. I showed them where he had cut me. It didn’t matter to them how badly hurt I was. The important thing in their mind was that I had killed this white guy. They beat me up pretty bad. They took me up on deck, and one of them proposed that they shoot me and throw my body into the water. The rest of them agreed. If I ever needed the Lord, I needed Him right then.”
Mamie was listening with rapt attention and watching his handsome features as he spoke.
Cooper said, “The Lord is a miracle worker. Praise God! Before they could shoot me, there was a mighty explosion. Our tanker had been struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat. The ship was crippled. Furthermore, we were transporting oil. The exploded fuel was burning so hot the hair on my body was cooking. We were on fire. We were going to burn or blow up before rescue got to us. There was no way out of this. To make matters worse, the Germans hit us again with two more torpedoes. Finally, there was another tremendous explosion and the ship split in half. I was flung into the sea. As I was fighting for my life against the searing flames and the mighty currents trying to drag me under, I remembered the name of my God and I called out to Him and He heard me. It was a black night, but the flames were bright and I soon spotted something floating on top of the water. It was a lifeboat. I swam to it and got in. The Lord’s mighty hand was on that lifeboat and He steered it away from the deadly pull of the sinking ship. Everything else floating was being sucked down into the black water by the whirling pool created by the sinking ship. Everything but the little lifeboat that I was on disappeared in seconds. Then it was very quiet. There is nothing more terrifying than the infinite quietness when you are alone in the middle of the ocean at night. There were not even stars in the sky. I kept my eyes open, but there was nothing to see. Everyone else was gone. All night I kept my eyes open, looking for survivors, but there was no one. In the morning when the sun came up, there was much debris in the water and two floating bodies among the wreckage. I recognized the Swede’s body. The other was the body of the man who had come up with the idea to shoot me. I took their bodies as a sign from the Lord. It was a warning of what should have justly been my fate. There were other things floating in the ocean. A wooden crate with a canteen of water in it, four tins of salted pork, and a blanket. Another crate floated near and when I opened it, it was empty except for a Bible. I made that water and that salted pork last for three weeks. I covered myself by day in the blanket to protect from the sun, and at night I slept in it to protect from the cold. I read my Bible every waking hour. The Psalms were of a special comfort to me. The Gospels gave me hope that the same Jesus of Nazareth who had died on the cross for me was keeping me alive now and would eventually save me. But why? Why should a sinner like me be allowed to live? To serve Him, that’s why, Praise the Lord! There were no oars in the boat, so I floated until I was picked up. I floated for twenty-two days and was picked up by a Spanish freighter on the day my last drop of water ran out. It was another sign from the Lord. If all hope is gone, trust in the Lord.”
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