One Good Mama Bone

by McClain, Bren; Monroe, Mary Alice;

  The gun in Luther’s hand shook.

  He watched Uncle become smaller and smaller.

  He watched Uncle go inside his house.

  Luther stood still and waited for him to come back to him. Life could resume then. Luther’s life.

  But Uncle stayed inside.

  Luther lowered his gun.

  He walked back to his truck and returned the gun beneath his seat. Then he went to his garage and found his whiskey bottle, turned it up at his mouth and did not stop until all of the liquid was gone.

  …..

  Sarah’s boy sat between her and Mr. Thrasher on the ride home from the hospital. It was late morning and a school day, the first after the Christmas holidays, but her boy had stayed out in the hopes that this would be the day she’d get to come home.

  They held hands.

  Mr. Thrasher was not wearing his cowboy hat. She wondered if he’d lost it and couldn’t afford to buy another, with all of the money he’d spent on them.

  Six days was a long time to be away and an expensive time, too. Her hospital bill totaled almost two hundred dollars. Sarah had worried they’d not let her out until she paid it, but the man there told her as long as she could make a monthly payment, he wouldn’t turn her over to Collections. “And you don’t want to be turned over to Collections,” he’d said. “They’ll try and take whatever you have.” She needed to get back to sewing those dresses as soon as she stepped in the door, but her doctor told her she needed bed rest for at least another week. She did not tell him, but that would not be possible.

  As they approached her house, she saw Billy Udean’s truck in his driveway. She squeezed Emerson Bridge’s hand. My boy, she thought and rested her head against the window.

  Mr. Thrasher stopped in front of his old home place and turned her head and body towards it. A “For Sale” sign was out front. She didn’t know how much a cowboy hat would cost, but this seemed extreme. But then she remembered on one of his visits, he had asked about her bill, and she had not wanted to talk about it in front of her boy. It called for talking about it here. “I want you to know I’ll get my hospital bill covered,” she said and made sure she had a lift in her voice.

  “Mr. Ike said he don’t need it no more, Mama.”

  “But, don’t you—” Sarah said.

  “That’s right. Don’t need it no more.” He let off on his brake and turned into their driveway, pulled up to the house, and came around and opened her door. The sun fell just right on his face, and she saw in it a peace that she’d never seen in him. It was as if an iron had removed all of the wrinkles, smoothed down his skin and made him young again.

  She waited until he brought his eyes full on her, and then she told him, “I can’t let you do it. But thank you.”

  “It’s already done.” He bowed towards her like the gentleman he was and extended his hand. She felt like Scarlett. She’d always wondered if Rhett Butler was wearing cologne in that movie. She thought she smelled it now and drew it up her body, took his hand and stepped from his truck, which could have been the finest carriage.

  “I think it’s time we started calling each other by our given names,” he said. “What do you say, Sarah?”

  Hearing her name sent a ripple through her, not the kind she got when she first met Harold. That one had ridden the surface of her skin like a child’s foot running through a fresh-plowed field, its slight weight barely moving the warm dirt. But this one, this one ran deep, churning soil that lay hidden and bringing it high to see the light. “I say that’ll take some getting used to. But, yes sir.” She paused before she said his name. “Yes sir, Ike.”

  “Mama! Come on,” Emerson Bridge yelled from the steps. He had the screened door open.

  Ike Thrasher bowed towards her and stepped out of the way as if clearing a path for her. She took a few steps, but then her heart began to race, and she thought she might faint. She bent over, putting her hands on her knees. Her boy rushed to her side, and, in no time, he and Ike had their hands holding around her waist. With their help, she resumed walking, making their way to the house and up the steps and to the kitchen, where a cake sat on the table. It looked to have chocolate frosting.

  “Look what me and Mr. Ike made for you, Mama!”

  Sarah brought her hands to her mouth.

  Her boy threw his arms around her. “I’m glad you’re home, Mama!”

  “Me, too, hon.”

  “Make that three of us,” Ike said and reached for her hand and her boy’s.

  They all held like that, giving those words their own space, which made the words grow even bigger, while light from the outside world shined through the curtains over the sink, shooting through in long rays that seemed to want to reach as far as they could.

  …..

  Luther returned to the spot where he and Uncle had last stood together. He sat in the pasture grass and weeds, long dead, and watched Uncle’s house. He had a hard time sitting up. The whiskey made his body feel like jelly.

  In time, Uncle and his common-law emerged, both loaded down like mules. They looked to be dragging bed sheets, filled as fat as ticks. Uncle was pulling a wagon, the one he used to collect drink bottles along the roadside for extra money. “Hey!” Luther tried to call out and get on his feet but fell. “Hey!” he tried again from the ground, his head bobbing like a baby just learning to lift. “Why didn’t you never come back to see me when you left way back then? Just to say hey. Why didn’t you? We were just boys then.”

  Luther watched them until he could see them no more.

  And then he kept working until he got back on his feet and could go to the barn, where he fetched his can of kerosene and set back off across the field.

  When he got to his tenant house, he poured kerosene all around the outside. Then, he took his matches from his overalls pocket and struck one hard against the rough tarpaper, a light tan. He’d selected that color over the dark gray, tan being closer to white. He wondered if Uncle ever noticed that Luther had done that for him.

  He threw the burning match to the ground.

  And then he stepped back and watched it all die.

  I laid up there in that hospital bed and thought about all you’ve taught me, Mama Red, and about something I still ain’t done with my boy. I ain’t played with him. Asked my nurse for the biggest piece of paper they had, so I could wad it up and throw it in the air and practice catching it. But she made me stop.

  I see Billy Udean has come back. His truck is still over there. Has he been over here? You seen him talking to my boy? I see part of the garden’s been cleaned up. He must be coming back for good. But he will not take my boy away.

  Wonder if he still likes his beer? The last catfish supper we all had together was the night before he packed his suitcase and took off walking to town to join the Army and go across the big waters to kill what he called “slant eyes.” He’d been making fun of Harold for not going, calling him “four eyes.” All around his plate, Billy Udean had lined the bottles of beer he’d finished off while he was eating, lined up like he was making a wall out of them. There was 10 of them. Mattie tried to get him to back off a little bit, and he slapped her mouth so hard, he knocked her in the floor. Harold picked up Billy Udean and threw him out the door into the yard like he was a sack of potatoes.

  Funny I say potatoes because that was the first sign, after Billy Udean left out of here, that we were all starting on sewing a new kind of dress. That very next Sunday night, we picked right up with our fish supper. Mattie come over, and it didn’t take Harold long to make that first stitch. He said, “I don’t like the way you make Mattie cut our French fried potatoes.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Like fingers,” he went and held up one of his in the air.

  “That’s how they supposed to be, Harold. Longways,” I told him.

  “Only thing that’s supposed to be longways is a woman’s hair,” he said. “I like a woman’s hair hanging long.” He used his hands to touch his shou
lders.

  He’d never known me to wear hair that way. Mine was always in a bun. Mattie’s too. I’d done it up for her in a bun that day.

  “I like my potatoes cut round, sliced thin and cut round,” Harold kept going.

  “Sister, I don’t mind cutting them round next time,” Mattie said. She always cut them while I fried the fish.

  “Longways is how they’re supposed to be,” I said. “That’s proper.”

  Mattie kept cutting them longways for a Sunday or two. But then she started cutting a few of them round. She’d mix them in with what was cut proper, and, once she’d fried them all, she’d set a couple of the rounds off the side of the plate and aim them straight at Harold. He’d see them and grin.

  Then Billy Udean stopped sending his army paychecks home. “You know how much he likes his beer,” is all Mattie said about it, but I could see worry lines streaking her face. I’d seen my mama sew enough to know how to run a stitch or two, so I asked Harold to get me a sewing machine, and I set about sewing dresses and selling them and giving Mattie the money. Harold took them to work and sold them to some men for their wives. Two dollars apiece.

  But then they did a leap frog one Sunday night while we was eating our catfish. Harold up and said he’d found Mattie a job, said the telephone company needed operators to connect calls, called them Hello Girls.

  “Sister don’t need no job,” I told him. “She’s got my dress money.”

  Mattie didn’t say a word.

  “Billy Udean never would stand for her getting no job,” I told him.

  “Billy Udean ain’t here.” Harold was talking in a voice more stern than I’d ever heard.

  “Then I want one, too,” I said.

  Harold slammed his fist on the table. Made his beer bottle bounce up in the air. He’d taken to drinking him one or two. “You’re stout,” he said. “And handy around the house.”

  “Y’all,” Mattie said in the slightest little voice. “I do think I would like to try to work.” She had her eyes on Harold.

  Harold picked up his beer and took a big swallow.

  In two days’ time, they started riding to work together every morning and coming home together every afternoon. And in a week’s time, Mattie had her hair down, hanging longways.

  Harold went to catching less and less fish. It seemed like every Sunday he’d come home with one more short of the Sunday before, until this one Sunday in September, the one before his birthday, he came home with just one. Mattie was standing out in the yard with me when he pulled up. I said to him, “What you trying to do? Starve us?”

  Harold didn’t say nothing.

  “One fish ain’t going to feed three people,” I said, but he stood there like a bump on a log.

  That’s when Mattie popped up and said, “He don’t like to fish.”

  “What you mean he don’t like to fish?” I said.

  She looked at Harold. “Tell her, Harold.”

  “You tell her,” he said.

  Mattie twirled a piece of her long hair with her finger. “Harold don’t like to kill nothing,” she said.

  “He don’t like to kill a fish?” I said.

  Harold had his head hung down.

  “Harry just went along, just because,”Mattie said.

  “Harry?”I called out.

  “I meant Harold,” she said and started for the house. “I’ll start cutting up the potatoes.”

  But I’d seen her eyes, and they told me everything.

  JANUARY 2–3, 1952

  Sarah rested her body against the kitchen table as she bent over it, pinning the thin paper pattern to the fabric beneath. This would be her second dress since she had come home from the hospital two days before. She had finished the first one by alternating between staying in bed and sewing, at first resting for two hours and then working for 15 minutes, but over the two days, she had built up to almost equal time.

  A knock came on her screened door. She wasn’t expecting Ike, and her boy was at school, but he wouldn’t knock anyway. Maybe it was Mr. Allgood, again, wanting his money or worse, Mama Red.

  She heard a name being called. She heard Clementine. It was Billy Udean. She drew in her breath. He couldn’t see inside, but what if he decided to come through the porch like he used to and knock on the big door? He’d be able to see her, the shape of her anyway, through those bare curtains.

  She tiptoed backwards to the hall and hid against the inside wall, pulling the darkness around her like a blanket. But what if he was in trouble like she had been in trouble on Christmas day, and he needed her?

  She smoothed down her housedress, tucked in her stray hairs, and went to the porch. But he was no longer there. He was approaching the garden. “Excuse me,” she called out.

  He turned towards her and removed his dark hat, holding it in front of his chest like a gentleman. Sarah had never seen this in him. Maybe he wanted to scratch his head. That would be more like him. But he didn’t.

  “Left something for your boy there on the steps,” he called out, “if you’ll kindly see that he gets it.”

  Sarah grabbed onto the doorjamb. He’d said “your boy.” Had they been talking?

  “And I stacked some firewood against the house there for y’all to burn. Your boy can bring it in for you. He’s that kind of boy.”

  They had been talking. Billy Udean knew him. Had he seen his dimples? Surely, he’d seen his dimples.

  She should tell him thank you, but she’d have to use her Sarah voice.

  He resumed walking towards the garden. Sarah eased open the door and saw the sack. It was rather large and had Sears & Roebuck on the outside of it. The gift was for Emerson Bridge, she knew, but still she picked it up and peeked inside and saw a garment of some sort. She removed it. It was a coat, a nice one, brown, and made of some kind of leather. Even the lining was nice, a lighter shade of brown, and made of rayon that in itself cost good money. Fifty-eight cents a yard was the last she had paid for it.

  She would risk it. She called out, “Thank you. That’s real nice of you.”

  He was in the garden now. He threw up his hand to acknowledge her words. A big section of it had been cleared. He started back towards her, and Sarah wanted to run inside the house, yet also go forward into the yard to greet him. But she stayed where she was and settled her feet over the stains from the blood that Mattie had left the night she crawled out that door.

  He came to stand just out from the bottom step. A wave of tingles climbed Sarah’s body.

  He took his cigarette from his mouth and held it down by his side. “Didn’t know what size to get him but thought that looked about right.”

  Sarah nodded. “It’s very right.”

  He took a step towards her. She squeezed the door jamb. “He’s a hard worker. In one of the side pockets, he’ll find the money I owe him for helping me try to clean up some of that old garden over there.”

  They had spent time together. But her boy had not said. “A hard worker, yes. Thank you very much.” She was speaking full in her Sarah voice. He did not want to take Emerson Bridge from her.

  Billy Udean pulled long on his cigarette. Sarah felt like he was pulling her.

  He returned his hat to his head and tipped it towards her and turned to leave.

  She didn’t want him to. She swung open the door and went down the steps after him.

  He stopped but kept his back to her. His shoulders were quivering.

  They were no more than two feet apart. Sarah felt a circle around the two of them, the two of them alone, sectioned off from all doings and sounds of the rest of the world.

  “I became a better man while I was over there,” he said, his voice carrying waves. “People that knew me before I went across the big waters would see that I’m a different man now.”

  Sarah wanted him to turn around, but that would put it all on him. She needed to do something now. She moved around in front.

  He had his head bowed, and she didn’t know if he was a praying ma
n now or just afraid to look at her. But what she did know was this was a different man. And this different man knew.

  “We was in gunfire in France, and there, out in the middle of a field, was this milk cow that was bawling.” Sarah kept her ear out for him to call her name. She told herself that when he did, she would say it was so. “The cow needed to be milked. Her sack was so full, it looked like it might bust wide open. The way she was hollering, it got down inside of me and made me start to shake. I ran to her, put my gun down and took her teats in my hands and went to milking her.”

  Sarah felt a tug at her nipples.

  He removed his hat and held it upside down. “Used my helmet as a pail like this and let that good milk run into it and keep it there, all safe. Bullets were flying all around me like a flock of birds, and not one of them hit me. Or her.” He brought his eyes up to Sarah’s now and locked in. “I felt like she was my Mattie.”

  Sarah felt a jolt start at her feet and shoot skyward. She widened her stance to steady herself, but not because, as times before, when she feared what was coming, but because she welcomed it, welcomed it full.

  “God protected me, and I told him, ‘If you keep me alive and let me go back home to my Mattie, I’ll do her right, I promise.’ But I didn’t get that chance. Sometimes you don’t get another chance.” His entire face was wet. “I just wish Mattie could have seen me now.”

  “I do, too,” Sarah told him fast, and when she did, she knew she had crossed the line. She wanted to scream My name’s not Clementine. But he knew that already.

  They held their eyes on each other, both staring truth head on.

  “Mattie would have loved him, your boy,” Billy Udean said. “His dimples, especially.”

  Sarah felt every nerve in her body become like a soldier and salute. This is what it felt like to serve, she thought, serve something bigger than herself. She would risk it now, the whole truth. “Yes, she would have. And his dimples, yes. They can hold a whole lot of happiness. She would see it.”

  She wanted to put her arms around him. She wanted the two of them to stay up for the rest of the day and night and talk and then go clear the rest of the garden, and come spring plow it and run through it barefoot, and when they’d felt all the fresh dirt they could stand, plant it in potatoes and corn and green beans. And her boy could join them.