Natural Bridges

by Debbie Lynn McCampbell

  “Daddy!” I called. I was about thirty feet behind him.

  He didn’t turn around, just kept right on going.

  “Daddy, wait up!” I was right on him, and he quickened his step. “Please, Daddy, stop.” I was out of breath.

  He whirled around. “Liar,” he said to me, stopping. “When I give you a job to do, you do it and you finish it.”

  I was standing right in front of him, and his large frame made me feel small and defenseless. He glared down at me. His face was rough; he hadn’t shaved yet, and his stubble looked like black nylon threads. He turned around and continued climbing down towards the pond. The pathway was rocky and steep, and it was hard to keep my footing. But I followed along behind him. We were only a few yards away from the pond.

  “Daddy, let us keep him. We got rid of the others.”

  “I told you to get rid of all three of them,” he said without looking at me.

  “I know, but Birdie wanted him real bad; she got attached to him during the ride. I just couldn’t give him away. And Florabelle, she said she’d keep him up at her and Jason’s.”

  We were at the bank of the pond. The water looked calm, a cool green. Daddy squatted down with Jimmy and pulled a bandanna out of his back pocket. “We can’t keep it. And you know your sister won’t either. Not now. It’ll be nothing but a hassle.” He stared out at the water a few seconds, wiped his brow. “This is painless.”

  “Daddy, please, you just can’t do this.” I pleaded; dust was mixed in with my tears. My stomach was in knots.

  He started tying the pup’s paws together with the bandanna. Jimmy squirmed under Daddy’s firm hold. I watched his busy hands. The water rippled over the bank and Jimmy lapped at it.

  “I’ll take care of him,” I said trying to recompose myself. “I’ll pay for his food and train him to hunt.” My words choked out. “Daddy, please, don’t. Florabelle can take him with her tomorrow.”

  “They’re going to have a young one to take care of; they don’t need no dog. Now sit still,” he said to Jimmy, who was now yelping.

  The puppy struggled. Birdie was right, I thought, Jimmy was the smartest. Maybe he did know. Exasperated, I turned to go.

  Then, suddenly, I hadn’t taken three steps back, and I don’t know what came over me, but something did, an urgency, something powerful and determined. I lunged at the shore and snatched the bandanna out of Daddy’s big hands. “No,” I shouted, “I promised Birdie!” I had lost all control, and there was no taking it all back. I stiffened, flinched, waited for his blow.

  But minutes went by and he never struck. And he never spoke. At last I opened my eyes, afraid of what I’d see, or not see.

  Daddy was kneeling, head down, still holding Jimmy, but more gently now, not so forceful. He looked up, gazed across the pond.

  I wiped my face on the bandanna, took deep breaths, and sat down behind him. I didn’t speak; nor did he. We both just sat there waiting for the sun to come up and maybe shed some light on what had just happened. And finally when it was up high enough to cast its own image in the pond, Daddy spoke. “What’s Birdie want with a mutt like this? There’s no guarantee this one can see anything either. Blindness is hereditary in dogs, you know. Heidi was born blind.”

  “He can see,” I said, quietly. “He climbed in the tire in the truck. Birdie wants to take care of him. She wants to raise him up and have him as her friend. Heidi’s getting old.” I was sitting on the bank a couple feet away from him and was beginning to calm down.

  Daddy turned the pup over in his big hands and studied him. “He’s a sturdy one. Probably grow to forty, maybe fifty pounds.”

  “We’ll feed him.”

  He set Jimmy down and turned him loose. The pup shook himself, waddled towards the water, and licked the mud.

  “His name is Jimmy,” I said. “That’s what Birdie calls him.”

  Daddy nodded and tossed a pebble at Jimmy. “Yep, Jimmy’s going to be a big one.” He turned and stared at me.

  I looked down and dug in the soft dirt, with my fingertips.

  After what seemed like an hour of silence, us just sitting there watching the day break, he finally said something. “Where’d you get that spitfire? Sure wasn’t from your Momma. More like your Grandma Feezer.” He grinned.

  I shrugged. Daddy had three daughters, but he expected us to be tough and controlled. Whenever we let our emotions show, it made him nervous. He wanted us to be strong. Brave and wise. Restrained.

  “I’m going to go on back up,” I said. “Momma’s probably got breakfast ready, and there’s a lot to do with the wedding.” I picked up Jimmy, who was chewing on a twig, and turned back towards the house. After a few paces, I turned back. “You coming?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “No, I’m going to stay down here a little while, you go on up. I want to check on the pump. It’s been doing an average of twenty a day, but it’s been slow this week. Tell your Momma to keep my eggs warm.”

  I nodded. The sun was all the way up now; once it got going, it always seemed to shoot up fast like a balloon let loose at kickoff. I stretched Jimmy across the back of my shoulders and scratched his hind. “Come on, boy,” I said, “we’re going home.”

  5. Taking Vows

  The ceremony was going fine and just as planned until Florabelle leaned over to whisper in my ear that Grandma Trapper Feezer, who was sitting on the front row next to Momma, was staring at the preacher. We had been afraid of this and had hesitated about bringing her to the wedding in the first place, but I argued that Florabelle would be her first granddaughter to get married, and if she’d been well enough to have known this, Grandma would have been disappointed for missing all the celebration.

  All this had Florabelle worried sick, and she had threatened several things and hurled some rather obscene intentions at us if we dared let Grandma come to the ceremony, but I’d insisted and Momma had proposed maybe this would be one of her “good” days, promising she’d keep an eye out for trouble.

  Early that afternoon, when we’d gone over to Grandma’s to get her ready, Hazel and Momma figured out that Grandma hadn’t been to church for thirteen years. Grandpa Trapper, Grandma’s first husband, Momma and Hazel’s daddy, had been a Church of God minister, and when he had died, Grandma had lost some mental faculties and couldn’t ever attend services without thinking all preachers were Grandpa. What it really was, was that hardening of the arteries and the bad circulation caused her mind to slip, but her health didn’t really start failing until Grandpa passed away.

  Three years back, Grandma had eloped with Elmer Feezer, who bagged produce down at Mac’s Market, but a cashier found him dead in the parking lot, not a week after he and Grandma’d run off. Drank himself to death, they said. No one even knew they had gotten married until afterwards, which Momma thought was foolish and resented to no end. Out of spite now, Grandma still kept Elmer’s things around her house, like his bathrobe and bowling trophies, and she still had the pillowcase, unwashed, that he last lay his head on and a half-drunk Pepsi bottle in the refrigerator that he’d opened the morning of his death.

  These habits of Grandma and all the leftover remnants infuriated Momma and Hazel like nothing else in this world. When they went up the hill on Saturdays to bring her prescriptions and clean her house, they’d try throwing that stuff away, but nothing got by Grandma when she didn’t want it to, and she’d go dig everything out of the trash can and pout a few days before speaking to us again.

  Momma called Grandma’s condition “going senile.” Daddy said it was selective listening. Hazel claimed Grandma was devil-possessed.

  Now, standing before the altar, Florabelle kept turning around and watching Grandma’s every move. I glanced over my shoulder. Momma was dabbing at her own eyes with a Kleenex, but Grandma looked okay to me. “She’s just listening,” I whispered back to Florabelle.

  But Florabelle shook her head. “It’s happening again,” she muttered. “She’s started her swaying; get her out.�
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  Reverend Whitaker seemed a little distracted or curious at Florabelle and me up there talking during the vows, but he kept right on going. “Let us therefore reverently remember that God has established and sanctified marriage …” He paused when he got to “reverently” and said it louder than the other words.

  I tried to ignore Florabelle and smiled down at Birdie who counted the syllables in “reverently,” got four, and let go of my hand long enough to hold up four fingers. She was standing unusually still, though, and being good for the most part. Even the peach carnation bouquet she was holding was still in its upright position.

  I leaned back a little to let some weight off my feet because the high heels I was wearing were squeezing my toes like a vise. I was surprised to see that Grandma had put her hat back on. Wearing hats in buildings had always been against Grandma’s principles; she’d taught us never to do it, said it wasn’t any more ladylike than shooting craps. Some of Momma’s distant cousins, whom I didn’t know, craned their heads and moved back and forth in the row behind Grandma, trying to see around the large, olive-green brim with peach plastic flowers.

  “Get her hat,” I mouthed and signaled to Momma who frowned because she couldn’t understand me and so wrote “WHAT?” real large on an offering envelope and held it up.

  “Her hat,” I mouthed, again, pretending to adjust Birdie’s hairpiece, trying to clue her in. “People can’t see.”

  Florabelle, too, had noticed the hat, and started tugging at her own veil, glaring at Momma to do something.

  Jason stood there, scowling, and his brother, Dwayne, who was standing up as Jason’s best man and whom I despised, was grinning; he kept winking at me.

  Reverend Whitaker looked perturbed at us and all our interruptions and started speaking louder and louder, voice tremoring. “Forasmuch as these two persons have come hither to be made one in this holy estate, if there be any present who knows any just cause why they may not lawfully be joined in marriage, I require him or her now to make it known, or ever after to hold peace.”

  Just then, Momma figured out what I’d been trying to tell her, snatched the hat off Grandma, forgetting to take out the bobbypins first, and Grandma hollered.

  She yelled loud enough to startle a scarecrow; several gasps came from the congregation and Reverend Whitaker stopped preaching.

  “Now you did it,” Florabelle hissed at Momma, not bothering to whisper at this point.

  Momma, embarrassed and more than likely disappointed that things were no longer going like she’d planned, jammed the hat back in Grandma’s lap and hung her head. Daddy, who was sitting on the other side of her, did nothing more than shake his head and shrug his shoulders at us. Everyone else just waited.

  “You can go on, now, Reverend,” I said, trying to break the silence. “She’s all right.” I was worried about Momma, though, her being so sensitive.

  The Reverend didn’t look convinced, but he had a duty to perform, and preachers always seem to pull themselves together. Even in those most trying moments, when someone’s in need of healing or saving, or just some reassuring that a Holy Spirit’s looking out for the lost souls.

  I had by then earned a record of perfect Sunday school attendance growing up and never missing a church service, even with the mumps once, and could rightly testify that when preachers are in the presence of God and an assembly of God-fearing, miracle-expecting people, they stand firm. They possess all strength and know all wisdom, and they own up to it, time after time.

  I realized, right then, standing there in the presence of God the Father Almighty, face-to-face with a man of God, and a large wood-carved cross hanging over my head, which always reminded me of two of those Little Debbie Nutty Bar waffle bars, that I could never be a preacher. Not with my wavering in standing firm lately. Not with my mind on candy bars.

  Reverend Whitaker, though, was a good man, ordained, one of unfaltering faith and the power to stand solid as a rock. He respected our family in spite of the obvious, and he finally got his sermon going again.

  But there wasn’t two, maybe three, sentences out of his mouth, when all of a sudden, Grandma, just as loud as she could, started reciting Grandpa’s favorite Bible verses from the King James edition of Proverbs, then humming “The Old Rugged Cross” in A major like she had done almost forty years ago as a choir leader of Grandpa’s church. And when the Reverend finally pronounced, “Man and Wife,” Grandma yelled, “Praise the Lord!”

  6. The Icing On The Cake

  The receiving line was set up in the church lobby as people filed out to cross the street to the civic hall for the reception. The Bowen Civic Hall was nice and roomy with terazzo floors and a paneled wall. Folks in four surrounding counties used it for square dances, auctions, 4-H club meetings, agricultural conventions, and Tuesday night Bingo. We had rented it for the reception as opposed to using the church fellowship hall so we could dance. The Full Gospel Pentecostal believed dancing summoned the devil.

  As the guests filed by us, kissing Momma, shaking Jason’s and Daddy’s hands, and congratulating Florabelle, Birdie, who’d been the one to leave the altar to take Grandma out, looked up at me and said, “Grandma had Grandpa’s supper planned out on the back of her hymnal. Pork chops, fried potatoes, okra, and creamed corn.”

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s sitting on that bench just outside the door, resting.”

  “Grandma never did handle a crowd real well,” I told Birdie. “And she never did forget to include a vegetable, either.”

  The reception, unfortunately, went no smoother than the ceremony itself. The deejay, another one of Jason’s brothers, played good music that seemed to suit everyone’s dancing tastes, and he was good with the microphone when it came time to announce the dollar dance and the garter toss. The room looked nice with the crepe streamers and bells draped from the ceiling, and the food was delicious, went real fast. Momma was proud.

  It was the cake, though, the fifty-five dollar-and-thirty-two cent cake, that caused the ruckus. Evidently it was delivered while the ceremony was going on, so the bakers from Woody’s had just dropped it off and left. They’d set it up on the table with the presents, and it looked extra nice how the icing matched some of the gift wrap. The cake was chocolate, three tiers, just as we ordered, and the icing was the right colors, peach and blue. Even the wording was right; the names were spelled correctly. It read: “Congratulations Florabelle and Jason.”

  But the topper; it threw a left curve. Where any bakery could ever have found a cake top like the one on Florabelle and Jason Crabtree’s cake, I’ll never know.

  And naturally, Florabelle was the first to spot it. I had just come back from taking Grandma home and had been in the bathroom changing Birdie’s dress because Momma didn’t want her running around getting the nice one dirty, when Florabelle grabbed me by the bow on the back of my dress and dragged me over to the cake.

  “Look,” she demanded. “Look at that.” Hands on hips, she stood scowling at her own wedding cake, face flushed.

  There it was. Two, maybe three feet above our heads, situated between a plastic bride and groom all decked out in formal wedding attire, was a little plastic baby, about an inch high. But it wasn’t just a regular baby, though, with a rattle and bonnet, standing there in diapers holding its Momma and Daddy’s hands. It was a black baby.

  The fact that it was black and Jason was white had all sorts of implications, so I could imagine Florabelle’s shock and humiliation and understood why her temper, no doubt, was starting to flare.

  “I’ll get Momma,” I said and left Florabelle standing there, mad as a wet hen.

  Momma was serving punch and I walked right up to her and just came straight out with it. “Someone’s put a white couple with a black baby on top of the wedding cake, and Florabelle’s fuming.”

  For a moment Momma didn’t say anything, just stood there trying to register what I’d said. Then she excused herself from some folks waiting i
n line and charged towards the cake. I followed along behind.

  By this time, Florabelle was balanced on a folding chair, with the front of her dress bunched up in one hand, leaning over the cake, trying to remove the ornament.

  “Go grab her,” said Momma. “She’s liable to fall into that cake.”

  I rushed over and steadied the chair.

  “Jesus,” said Florabelle, climbing down. “Do you think I got it in time?” Holding it in her fingertips, as if it were some evil token, she handed me the wicked little family greased with icing. “Get rid of it.”

  I carried the topper to the bathroom in the lobby of the hall. When I got inside the rest room, no one else was in there, and I was half tempted to lick the icing off it before throwing it away. But the principle of it, the sight of it, the very semblance of Jason, killed my craving. I wrapped it real well in toilet paper, and buried it in the bottom of the wastepaper basket.

  When I came out of the bathroom, everyone had gathered around the cake. I guess Florabelle had figured with the top layer all messed up, it was as good a time as any to go ahead with the cake cutting. Guests clapped, encouraging mischief, and flashbulbs blinked like fireflies. Birdie stood in front of me, her heels on my toes, trying to see over the crowd. She had her fingers crossed, hoping for a piece with a rose.

  “You having fun?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. The room was full of people, but mostly grown-ups, many of whom Birdie didn’t know, and some she’d only seen once at our Uncle Emul’s funeral. She watched as Florabelle and Jason smeared cake all over each other’s face. “Momma’s gonna say something to Florabelle later about using forks,” she said, frowning.