by Glenn Taylor
Staples smiled, then righted his ship. Put back on his grave face. “And so my granddaddy took that hammer and worked all night busting up that stone hearth, and beneath it, inside a hole, he found another burlap bag, but this one wasn’t full of hickory nuts. It was full of a treasure of old coins, enough to keep him rich the rest of his days.” Staples leaned forward, and, one by one, pulled a quarter from behind the ear of each child. “And from that treasure he gave me these, and now I’m giving them to you. Save em now. Use em for good.”
Even Harold, nearly ten, was impressed.
Leftover venison was divvied, foil-wrapped, and handed around. Goodnight embraces abounded. Little Willy took a leak on the smoldering fire and his parents shook their heads. Pants at his ankles, he turned and said, “Daddy teached me.”
“I bet you he did,” said Mrs. Wells. She turned to Rachel. “You best keep an eye on that one,” she told her.
Just before midnight, Ledford and Rachel found themselves locked together at the middle again, bucking under the quilt and trying to keep quiet for the children down the hall. They rolled from one another and lay panting, sweat on the tips of their noses already going cold. “I love you,” Ledford said, and they rolled back together and kissed.
He’d found something at Marrowbone he’d not known before. It was in the fire, the music, the stories. The children. His wife beside him. He didn’t even miss the liquor.
In the crook of his shoulder, Rachel felt nearly the same. Her discomfort with the place had passed. She’d come to know it well. But something was missing. Her family was not yet full. She’d been checking the calendar, studying the pattern of her cycle. She breathed in the fire smell of her man beside her and rubbed her finger over his belly scar. She closed her eyes and prayed that what they’d just done would bring her another baby.
In his dreams that night, Ledford encountered a stone fireplace hearth like the one from Staples’ ghost story. There were no hickory nuts or human hands. A pull string hung from inside the chimney shaft. He knelt, leaned in, and pulled it. There was no click, no light. He pulled again. A sound came, like ice cracking. He pulled again. There was a shift of some sort above, and small pieces of rock and ash fell onto Ledford’s hand. He gave a final tug and something gave, and there arose from way up the chimney a hollow, empty sound. An old light socket fell and knocked against his hand. It left a red impression, circle-shaped, and it settled in the fireplace ashes. Then, a voice came from up the chimney, nearly lost inside the hollow howl. “Orb,” it whispered.
Ledford scooted the light socket away and lay down on the ash. He stared up the shaft into darkness, a coal-black pinpoint. “What?” he asked.
“Orb,” said the voice. “You shall call him Orb.”
JUNE 1953
THE TEST BATCHES CAME out of the furnace ugly-colored and easily cracked. Among them, here and there, was passable marble, enough to fill fifty hand-knitted bags, twenty-five count in each. They were banded swirl marbles of green and blue, amber and red. Shooters—taws, some called them—were bigger than the rest. Ledford made these by hand, one at a time.
Lizzie Wells sat in a frayed wicker chair on the Ledford porch, her sundress a catch-all for yarn. Her wooden needles clicked as she knitted and purled, knitted and purled. She kept it loose in back and finished up the twelfth row, wrists rolling loose and regular, talking while she worked. “You sure you feelin up to this?” she asked.
Beside her was Rachel. She cast off and regarded the candy-striped marble bag she’d made. “This one ought to be for Christmastime,” she said.
Lizzie was about to cast off herself. “I just wonder if it’s a good idea for you to go.” The two women had spent hours of their weeks and days knitting together. They’d spoken of babies and war and canning and getting out sweat stains and husbands and mothers and daughters and sons. Sometimes they didn’t speak at all. They hummed. Sometimes, like now, they conversed without really conversing.
“I wish we had peppermint swirl marbles to fill this one,” Rachel said. She stuck the tusk needles in her hair bun.
Lizzie snipped yellow yarn with rusty shears. “I’d go with you if I thought they took kindly to Negroes.”
Ledford came out the front door buttoning his shirt collar. He smelled of aftershave, and there was a daub of soap foam in his earhole. “You ready?” he asked.
“Here.” Rachel handed him the latest marble bag. He took it inside and threw it on the pile with the rest, a mountain of drawstring satchels waiting on their filling. They spilled forth from apple baskets lining the dining room wall. The big table was a mess of papers and bills and a calendar with a pencil slash through every day up to this one, June 19th.
On the porch, Rachel readied herself to rise. She put one hand on her swollen belly and the other on the armrest.
“Honey that chair won’t hold,” Lizzie said.
“You sayin I’m fat?”
“I’m sayin that chair is old and you about to pop.”
Ledford came back out and the two of them helped Rachel stand.
“I’m not an invalid,” she said.
“Not yet anyway.” He kissed her forehead and rubbed at her belly. The Packard was acting up. They bumped across the lot to the gate, clutch slipping. Between them, a giftbasket bounced on cracked leather. Rachel had woven the basket and filled it with ten full marble bags, her best ones. Blue and green for boys. Pink and red for girls. It had been her idea to make such a peace offering to the Maynards.
It took ten minutes to wind around the ridge on Knob Road. Ledford worried all the way that Rachel would get carsick. In her state, it seemed likely. She was due in August.
The sign at the turnoff was in need of repair. Maynard Coal and Coke it read, and under that, Beech Fork Gap, W A. Some bug or fungus had made a hole where the V had been.
At the bottom of the steep paved lane, a man in coveralls leaned into the open hood of an old Chevy Standard, his socket wrench fixed on a stubborn spark plug. A brown dog stepped from the corrugated shed at the sound of the approaching car. The man straightened and looked. His skin had seen its share of sun, and he looked past middle-aged.
“Which one is that?” Rachel said.
Ledford put it in park and regarded the man through the windshield.
“I believe that’s Paul, the sheriff.”
“And you’re sure he’s a good man?”
“That’s what I gather.” Ledford stepped from the car, called “Afternoon,” and went around to help Rachel. He knew her thinking in all this. Even a Maynard wouldn’t shoot a pregnant woman.
The dog cut short its approach and growled, its hackles raised in a line.
Ledford took Rachel’s arm and eased her out. She shut the door behind her and Paul Maynard saw that she was pregnant. He whistled and the dog turned to him. He pointed to the shed and said, “Go on.” The dog obeyed.
Rachel carried the giftbasket and they strolled over to him. Her shoes sunk in the mud. Floods had visited again the week prior. Beech Fork Gap, unlike Marrowbone, was always hit hard by floodwater.
Paul Maynard stuck the socket wrench in a hip pocket and clasped his hands together.
When they were a couple yards off, Ledford said, “I’m Loyal Ledford, this is my wife, Rachel.” He extended for a handshake.
None came. “I know who you are,” the man said. “Are you Paul by chance?” Ledford had heard Paul was the wisest of the family, the slowest to percolate. The least ruffled by the color of some of his new neighbors. As sheriff of Wayne County, he was one of the few men in local politics who’d never been called crooked.
“I did know your daddy once,” he said. He unclasped his hands and went cross-chested. Took short looks at Rachel’s stomach. “Good ballplayer.”
“He was,” Ledford said.
Rachel glanced at Paul Maynard’s knuckles. They were covered in nicks, and the nicks were greased, filled in black like cracks in the street. “For you,” Rachel said. She gripped the basket wit
h both hands, extended it almost to touching him. “Well, your little ones really.” She smiled.
He didn’t. “What is it?” he said.
Her arms shook with the weight of the outstretched load. “It’s marbles,” she answered.
“Marbles.” He considered the word. “Playin marbles?”
They nodded.
He uncrossed and took the basket from her. Had another sideways look at her condition. “Thank you kindly,” he said. A frown settled in at his brow. He wanted to say more, but couldn’t.
From far off there was a hollow screeching sound. Ledford looked over Paul Maynard’s shoulder at the hillside in the distance. There was a square-cut black hole in its face, and emanating from within was a growing rumble and whine. A mantrip emerged and rolled forth, rounding a tight curve. With a thud, it hit track’s end at the top of a skinny tipple. The men aboard jostled and grabbed at their headlamps.
“Fridays are halfdays now,” Paul Maynard told them. He hadn’t turned around at the noise.
Rachel watched the men step from their low-lying vehicle. That far off, they looked to be boys, their silhouettes long and awkward, their limbs wispy. It seemed to her they’d been dipped in some giant inkwell, not a splotch of light to be found.
Ledford knew the Maynards had dug about as much from their seam as they could. For a little outfit like theirs, he imagined the coal boom was long since over. He cleared his throat. “We won’t keep you,” he said. “Just wanted to say hello, let you know about our little factory that’ll be up and running tomorrow.” He pulled an envelope from his back pocket and stuck it in the basket. “That’s an invitation to the party we’re having. State’s birthday and all.”
Paul Maynard nodded.
A week before, Ledford had driven rutted roads for a five-mile radius, putting such invites in the mailboxes of country people who’d loathed his presence since the day the Wells family moved in. He regarded the man before him, thought maybe he wasn’t such a person as that. “Was I right in thinking you were Paul?” Ledford asked him.
He nodded again. “Well, Sheriff, I hope your little ones like those marbles. Made em ourselves, and if any Maynard wants to come on over and see what we’ve done with the place, or even come to worship at our chapel, that’d be most welcome.”
“Most welcome by who?” Paul Maynard’s voice was tired, his eyes the same.
“By all of us,” Ledford said. Beside him, Rachel smiled and unstuck her shoes from the mud.
“What about them Bonecutter brothers?”
Ledford said, “I told them we were coming here today, and that I aimed to invite you. They won’t give you any trouble.” As he spoke these words, he realized that they were only half true. He had spoken to Dimple and Wimpy about his plans, but they’d made him no promises.
Paul Maynard turned and looked up the hill. The men filed down the mountain in two small packs, their knees bent and their frames clumsy against the uneven slope. “Well,” he said. He thought it best if the couple leave before his nephew and the other miners walked over. “I thank you for comin.”
This time he shook Ledford’s hand.
When they’d gone, Paul’s nephew walked over. “Who was that?” he asked.
“That was Loyal and Rachel Ledford.” He set the gift basket on the roof of the Chevy. “Good people.”
Shorty Maynard glared at his uncle. He could hardly believe his ears. “They’re nigger lovers is what they are,” he said.
Shorty was as mean as his dead cousin Sam, and drank nearly as much. He stood six and a half feet tall. Hands the size of a ball glove.
Paul ignored his nephew. He watched the Packard turn onto the main road.
On the way home, Ledford smoked a cigarette and blew it out the window, close to laughing at how easy it had all been. For so long, they’d been scared to make contact with the Maynards, and now, there’d been a handshake. “You could see it in his eyes,” Ledford said. He watched the road, steered with both hands. Raindrops shook loose from the canopy above and landed fat on the windshield. “He wasn’t half bad after all.”
Rachel didn’t respond.
He looked over at her. That was all it took to know.
He jammed the brakes and pulled to the shoulder. “Rachel,” he said. His vocal cords had tightened. He couldn’t swallow.
A single blue vessel wound a crooked path across her forehead. Everywhere her skin had gone bloodless. Sheet-white and open-mouthed, she wobbled in her seat. Her hands gripped her stomach. The sound of her breath was throaty, like an old woman.
Ledford put his hands on her cheeks and turned her face to his. She winced, and a high-pitched cry came up. The bags under her eyes darkened before him and she said, “No.”
Ledford put his hand next hers on the belly. He smelled the blood then. Pulled back the hem of her skirt. A flat roll of red coursed forward on the seat, widening as it went.
Ledford’s breath caught. Inside his head were so many buried visions of blood running, yet none had struck him as this one had. He pulled off his shirt and undershirt, balled them. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, stuffing the whole thing between Rachel’s legs.
He went hand over hand on the wheel and shifted reverse to forward. The tires spun once in the ditch and kicked free. He knew the Packard would not let him down. He knew he could get to the hospital in fifteen minutes flat if he kept the pedal mashed. He’d only have to slow at dead man’s curve.
ORB LEDFORD WAS born by cesarean section at 12:02 a.m. on June 20th, the state’s ninetieth birthday. He weighed five pounds even.
Rachel had nearly died in the ordeal. She’d been transfused twice, her skin the color of egg whites.
The doctor told Ledford that she’d bear no more children.
Ledford watched his wife sleep under the veil of morphine. He held her hand and did not cry. She was alive.
He walked down the hall and looked through chicken-wire glass at his new baby boy. “Little Orb,” he whispered, and indeed the boy was miniature. But he looked fine inside his incubator, his arms moving, his feet kicking.
Mack and Lizzie came to the hospital. Lizzie flicked a pill bug off the purple rhododendrons she’d arranged inside a pitcher. She brushed at the sweat-crusted hair on Rachel’s forehead.
A nurse looked on wide-eyed. She whispered to the others at the nurses’ station about the strange white folks and their strange colored visitors.
Ledford took Mack aside in the hallway. “I want the festivities to proceed,” he said. He looked at his watch. It was eight a.m. “Maynards might even show up, and I want folks to see that marble machine at work.” He tried to count in his head how many he’d invited. They’d told Bob Staples about the grand opening, and who knew how many he’d told. They’d given ten invitations to J. Carl Mitchum to hand out as he pleased. But J. Carl was more than a little wary about sending black children to Wayne County for any reason.
Mack nodded. He put his hand on Ledford’s shoulder. “You just worry about your wife and son, I’ll look after all that other,” he said.
Soon after, he and Lizzie headed back to Marrowbone.
By noon, the molten flow had started and Jerry poured green striking glass into the crucible. Herchel eyeballed the furnace belly. Ledford had taught him to gauge the temperature by sight. On this day, Herchel reckoned 2,000 degrees on the button.
Outside, a few neighbors had shown up after all, silent and overwhelmed by the sight of white and black living and working together. They were guarded in their holey shoes and faded Sunday-go-to-meetin clothes. Some were barefoot. One boy wore a circle of dirt around his face. He’d taken a washcloth to it at his mother’s behest and only bothered with the middle. Now she guided him by the shoulders and whispered when it was okay to move. They had never been within ten feet of a black person, and their kin had been among those to fire rifles in the air and shout epithets they’d heard since birth.
But these two, along with some others, had ignored the warn
ings of their kin. They’d come to see the marble company for themselves.
They ate with relish and speed the white-iced cake Mrs. Wells had made. They drank in gulps the punch she’d set out, a concoction she called Rum-Tum-Goody. “There’s plenty now,” Mrs. Wells said. “Don’t be bashful.” She smiled from behind the picnic table, just as she’d done all those years behind the cafeteria counter. She couldn’t begin to count the number of hateful white faces she’d looked at in that time. But these were country people. Their expressions were harder to read.
Mack used Lizzie’s sewing shears to cut a red ribbon strung across the factory’s main doors. Staples’ sign hung true above, bolted to the corrugated steel. Marrowbone Marble Company it read. Established 1951.
Back at the front gate, the brothers nodded to Bob Staples as he pulled to a stop. The top on his Ford Sportsman was down, and in the passenger seat next to him was a man with a movie camera. The man raised it and pointed it at Dimple.
Dimple trained his shotgun on the black-and-silver contraption, lined his sight to the middle of its three lenses.
“Hold on, hold on,” Bob Staples said. He put his hand on the camera and pushed it back to the young man’s lap where a small circle of piss had just leaked. “He’s just documenting this for me. Like he did my campaign.”
The young man’s knees quivered, and he used his camera to cover his accident.
Dimple lowered his weapon. “You keep it turned off till you get to the back of the Cut,” he said. “You hear me?”
“I hear you,” Bob said.
“Talkin to the other one Bob.”
“Yessir,” said the cameraman.
Inside the factory, the small crowd gathered and watched the thick flow of glass as it was sheared, dropping in little globes of perfection on the rollers. Mack had retensioned the chain drive, and now he stood watching with the rest of them as marble after marble proceeded hot down the line, trailed by shadows of orange. It was a sight to see.
