I walked the fields a lot that day, mostly not thinking much of anything. There’s a place that terror takes your mind where there aren’t any thoughts or feelings. It’s an empty place, so empty it seems all the world has come to a stop. That’s how I walked that day, wandering mindlessly because thinking hurt too much. It was late afternoon by the time I took my place on the porch swing again. Momma came out at suppertime to try and offer up some more food, but I couldn’t even think of eating.
“Gemma won’t neither,” she said, brushing hair back from my forehead. “She’s sick at heart, just like you. Crawled into bed at dawn and won’t budge.” And then she broke into tears so violently, she ran off into the house, leaving me to stare at nothing like I had for hours.
By the time I saw Luke again, it was getting dark. My body was more weary than I’d ever felt it, but my eyes were wide open like I’d propped them up with toothpicks. At that moment, nothing frightened me more than closing my eyes. I couldn’t do much of anything when I saw Luke, as I watched him walk up like a shell of himself, with a day’s growth on his face and mussed hair. It seemed to take every ounce of energy he had to climb the porch stairs. Then he looked at my face and cupped his hand under my chin.
When my chin started to shake, he crumpled and dropped to his knees in front of me. We huddled there together, crying like two children, and even though it was the worst way for us to be together, I was glad we were, nonetheless. I clung to him like the next breeze would blow him away from me for good. The tears stopped when we had no more, but words didn’t follow. We were out of those, too, and we sat there on the swing until the moon was high.
Luke stayed at our house that night, but he was distant. It was after midnight when I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, and after an hour of fending off nightmares, I bundled up in a robe and padded downstairs, afraid to bother Luke on the couch.
But he wasn’t there, so I crept over to the window to look outside for him.
He was on the porch, sitting on the front steps, slumped over like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I put my hand on the door to go out to him, but something stopped me. I could hear him whispering, prayers like those I’d heard from the lips of my daddy, and I suddenly felt intrusive. I turned slowly and crept back up the stairs.
I finally managed to doze from five thirty to six o’clock, and I was surprised to find Luke gone when I came downstairs. Momma was cleaning up after Daddy’s breakfast, humming in a broken voice, as though she had to hum in order to find some peace.
I walked up behind her. “Luke gone already?”
She turned and wrapped an arm around me for a long squeeze. “He had some work to do, baby. Daddy’s off already too. These men, they can’t sit still for long.”
Her words ended, but her hug didn’t, and I could see her eyes misting over as she looked at me. “You sleep at all, baby? You look plumb tuckered.”
“Can’t sleep, Momma. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.”
“You will, Jessilyn. One day soon. With every day that passes, things will seem to turn right again.”
“Things won’t ever seem right again, Momma. Not in this world.”
“God’s as good this mornin’ as He ever was.” She took my face in her hands and held on like my head was about to fall off. “Jessilyn,” she said with a quiver in her voice, “God had His eye on Noah that night, and He’s got His hand on him right now up in paradise. He has a plan for all things, even the ones that seem so terrible. There’s hope in everythin’ if you remember that.”
I watched her in wonder. Only two days ago bigots murdered a child full of hope and promise, nearly murdering his whole family with the sadness of it, and ever since, my momma had cried through her chores. But here she was this morning, praising God through her pain like the world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy and there wasn’t such a thing as evil and bitterness.
Bitterness. That word hung on my heart like a lead weight, and as my momma went back to her dishes, humming a church hymn with a shake in her voice, I felt sick at the idea of her knowing any measure of what my vengeful heart felt. I grabbed a biscuit and ate it standing up, forcing each bite down over the lump that had formed in my throat.
I didn’t know how Momma could see hope in a morning that had filled me with such rage, but I didn’t ask. Instead, I made my way wearily upstairs to ready myself for the day. I figured I’d be early to Miss Cleta’s, but I couldn’t stay in the house. I was too anxious this morning, all mixed up inside.
On my way out, Momma gave me a sack of biscuits. “Run these out to your daddy, Jessilyn? It’ll save me a trip.”
I took the sack without a word and trudged through the fields with a million thoughts running through my head. Only problem was, not one of those thoughts was complete, and together they were just a jumbled mess. I lifted my head into the breeze, hoping it would scatter them from my mind, but it didn’t work, and it must have showed on my face when I found Daddy.
“You feelin’ sick or somethin’, baby?”
I shrugged and lied. “No, sir.”
“What’s a shrug got to do with a ‘No, sir’? That mean you don’t know if you’re sick or not?”
“No, sir, my body’s fine. It’s my heart that feels like it’s dyin’.”
He put his arm around me, and though I’d normally have sunk into it like it could save me from every bad thing on the earth, today I stiffened at his touch. Not even Daddy could make me feel right again. No doubt he noticed, but he didn’t say a word, only kissed my hair and then reached for the sack of biscuits. He gave it a sniff and sighed, but his sigh came out all broken, just like Momma’s hum. It seemed we were all trying not to cry today. He ran an arm across his eyes real quick like I wouldn’t notice. “Your momma’s biscuits can always wake a man up.” He tossed the sack onto the seat of his tractor and eyed me with the intuition he’d always had about me. He took my shoulders in his hands. “Everythin’ will turn out fine, Jessilyn. Don’t you go worryin’ yourself over it.”
“How, Daddy? How can I not worry over livin’ in a world full of such evil? I’ve barely slept a second since that night. All I can see when I close my eyes is Noah hangin’ there.” I balled my fists at my sides and felt anger spread from one end of my body to the other until I was bathed in it. “And all I can think when I’m awake is how I’d like to see Delmar Custis or Cole Mundy or Sheriff Clancy himself hangin’ up there in his place.”
“Jessilyn, don’t you go thinkin’ like that.” His grip on my shoulders tightened as his eyes narrowed. “I’m tellin’ you right now, you’ll up and kill yourself if you let hate build up inside of you, and it won’t bring a bit of justice to them men, you hear? You leave vengeance to God.”
“There ain’t no vengeance from God, Daddy. I know. I’ve lived long enough to see wicked men do wicked things without so much as growin’ a wart on their nose. God ain’t in the business of justice, so I see it.”
He whipped his hat off and wiped his forehead with an angry swipe. “It ain’t your place to say what God is and ain’t. It’s God’s place, and He already told us in His Word that He’s a just God. Don’t you go blasphemin’ my Lord. You leave this to Him.”
His words crawled under my skin like chiggers. “You sayin’ we’re supposed to just sit around and do nothin’? let them run this town into the ground just ’cause they feel like it?”
I could see Daddy didn’t much like my tone, but he readjusted his stance and took a breath. His voice was good and stern all the same. “Jessilyn, I’m only sayin’ it’s up to us to do the right thing. Sometimes that means battlin’ back; sometimes that means settin’ still. I don’t know what we need to do yet, but all’s I’m sayin’ now is we ain’t goin’ to be well off if we walk around heavyhearted and filled with rage. We got to think sensible in this, and the only way we can do that is by turnin’ our fear and things over to God and lettin’ Him help us.”
I looked past him, trying to gathe
r myself. Being an adult myself still didn’t mean I was accustomed to yelling at my daddy. But even though my words came out in a mostly respectful tone, the words themselves were anything but, considering who I was speaking to. “God didn’t do much to help Noah Jarvis, did He?”
All that anger that I’d seen Daddy breathe his way through melted into sadness the minute those words came out of my mouth, and I immediately regretted them. But there was nothing I could do. I’d said them.
And I’d meant them.
Daddy looked at his shoes for a few seconds and then off into the distance. “God does what God does because He knows best and has the right to do with His creation as He pleases.” He squinted at me from under the droopy brim of his hat. “Didn’t you learn nothin’ with Mr. Poe’s passin’, Jessilyn?”
His words cut into me like a knife, but he didn’t apologize for them. He just nodded toward the house. “Ain’t you supposed to help Miss Cleta some today?”
“Yes’r.”
“Then you best get on.”
It was as sharp a dismissal as I’d ever received from my father, and I knew I’d put a wound on his heart that wouldn’t soon heal. The further I got away from a God I barely knew, the further I got away from those that I loved . . . because they loved Him.
It was with a mixture of anger, sadness, and fear that I walked to Miss Cleta’s. The air was sticky as molasses, and in five minutes, wet spots were starting to dot my blouse.
When I reached her house, I found Miss Cleta fanning herself on the porch. “Land’s sake, Jessilyn Lassiter. Ain’t felt heat like this in an age. It’s like the gates of hell opened up and breathed on the earth.”
“By the looks of the people round here, maybe some of them demons escaped while those gates were opened.”
She shook her head and blinked back tears. “I heard tell ain’t no one seen Malachi Jarvis these past two days. Poor boy blames himself.”
“It’s the Klan who need blamed.”
“Oh, rightly so. But I feel for their momma. Poor woman’s lost one son; ain’t right she should lose another.”
I sat next to her with a sigh. “He’ll come back, I imagine, and when he does, I reckon he’ll be rarin’ for a fight.”
She sat back and sighed, fanning herself harder. “That would be the worst thing he could do, and I hope he doesn’t. Won’t help anybody for him to come back here stirrin’ up more violence, least of all his momma.”
I sat up straighter. “Don’t tell me you think we should just up and forgive those men.”
“Certain I do! Don’t mean they shouldn’t go to jail or hang by a rope themselves, but forgiveness is for our benefit, Jessilyn, not theirs. Unforgiveness ruins us; it don’t do nothin’ to them.”
“Forgivin’ them is the same as actin’ like Noah never existed.”
“No, forgivin’ them cleans up our hearts. Unforgiveness is a poison, Jessilyn Lassiter. A poison! It’ll eat you up inside sure as you’re sittin’ there. Don’t you go throwin’ your life away on it. You do, and you’re no better’n they are.”
I was tired of a lot of things in my life. I was tired of waiting to marry Luke, tired of watching my loved ones hurt, tired of unbearable heat and worrying about money and watching my parents work their lives away with worries chasing them all the while. But most of all, on this particular summer day with death still tainting the air, I was tired of being lectured. And poor Miss Cleta got the brunt of my fatigue. “How can you say that?” I asked her with a temper that my momma likely thought she’d whipped out of me when I was younger. “How could you say I could be like them?”
I should have known better than to ever think of Miss Cleta as poor Miss Cleta. She reared back at my tone for about five seconds, and then she met my vehemence with plenty of her own. “Because whatever’s in your heart will come out one day, Jessilyn Lassiter. You count on that. And if you’ve got hate in there like they have in theirs, it’ll come out just like theirs spilled out all over Noah Jarvis.” She looked me over once and then pointed her fan at my face. “Heck, anybody can look at you and see it’s already startin’.”
Anger pulsed through my veins at her words, and I stood up sharply, sending my rocker banging against the wall. “Just once, I’d like to see God do some justice on this earth instead of lettin’ the no-good parts of His creation wander around destroyin’ people’s lives. Just once I’d like to see Him do what He said He’d do.”
She stopped fanning and laid her hands in her lap. “Well then, Miss Lassiter, let me tell you what I think. I think all men will pay for woundin’ people, one way or another. Either they’ll come to Jesus and have to deal with the heartache of realizin’ they helped nail Him to the cross by their wicked ways, or they’ll reject Him and suffer an eternity of hellfire.” She tipped her head up to look me in the eye. “You think that’s good enough punishment?”
“I don’t know if I do.”
Miss Cleta sniffed and looked away. “Well, too bad. You ain’t God. He is.”
“Well, if you ask me, He ain’t doin’ much of a job of it.”
The look on her face was about the same as it would have been if I’d hauled off and slapped her. “That’s blasphemy!”
I didn’t say a thing in reply. Blasphemy or not, I didn’t care one way or another what came out of my mouth at that moment, and I figured I’d just proved it about the best way I could.
Miss Cleta turned sharply away from me, and I watched her as she studied the geranium plant that hung from her porch ceiling before she turned to me again. “Let me tell you somethin’, Jessilyn. You’ve heard about God your whole life. You’ve been taught time and again about how His Son came to this here earth to suffer a horrifying death just so sinful people like me—and you, might I add—could be forgiven our debt and spend an eternity in paradise with Him. Time and time again, you’ve wondered if you could believe, and I always told you I believed you would. But time’s a-wastin’, and if you start thinkin’ you know best, and if you start decidin’ it’s your place to take God’s job of handin’ out vengeance, that heart of yours will harden up like cement and there won’t be any gettin’ in for Jesus. You hear me? You keep on burnin’ inside with hate, and it’ll eat you up from the inside out. You’ll lose your sense, you’ll lose your goodness, and you’ll lose everythin’ that’s important to you. And that includes me and your momma and daddy. Gemma too.” She stood and put her quivering hand beneath my chin for emphasis. “And Luke.”
My whole body shook from a combination of my rage and her dressing-down. She’d taken that knife Daddy had pricked my chest with and plunged it right into my heart, twisting it a full turn for emphasis. I didn’t want to look into those eyes of hers, the ones that seemed to see my dirty soul for what it was, but I couldn’t look away.
“This ain’t no time for talkin’ about me and Luke.”
She pulled her arm away from me sharply. “Ain’t no time for doubtin’ God, neither, Jessilyn, but you’re doin’ a fine job of it.” She opened the screen door and looked over her shoulder at me. “I reckon I don’t need your help today after all. Maybe you best spend this day takin’ good stock of things in your own life.”
She walked inside and closed the door behind her, shutting me out.
Bitterness and anger are evil twins that can follow a body around wherever she goes, and they whisper things in her ears that only make bad things worse. Maybe I didn’t know much about most things, but I knew there wasn’t much good in me that day, and I walked away from Miss Cleta’s house stewing in hot juices, just wishing for my chance to give back some of the bad stuff that had come my way. And that’s why, when I decided to walk into town, I took the long route instead of the short.
There was a part of me deep down in the middle of all that anger that knew good and well what I was doing, that the long way around would take me past Cole Mundy’s house. But I worked hard to keep my conscious parts from admitting to it. I didn’t have a single idea what I was planning to do if I
caught sight of him. All the same, I burned inside to have a look at even one of the men I knew must have helped string up Noah Jarvis, and Cole Mundy lived the closest to me.
Back in the day when my grandparents were young, most people would have fallen down dead in shock to see what was going on in Calloway these days. Back then, it was accepted fact that whites and coloreds didn’t mix. I remembered my granddaddy telling me that colored folks were just as much God’s children as the rest of us and there weren’t any reason to hate nobody because of how God chose to paint their skin. In the same breath he also told me there would be peace between white folks and colored folks so far as the colored folks kept their place. “They wasn’t created for much more than dirty work, anyhow, Jessilyn.”
I guess Granddaddy Mac reckoned God had better feelings for some of His children than He did for others.
My daddy didn’t feel the same as his daddy did, and he made a point of telling me more than twice. He made a point of telling Granddaddy Mac, too, which is when Granddaddy Mac would shake his head and walk out of the room no matter if Daddy was finished talking or not. When that happened, Granny Rose would sigh so that a whistle came out of the space where one of her front teeth had been. “That man don’t know his Bible,” she’d say. Then she’d pat my daddy on the back and wander off to find another chore to keep her mind busy.
For three weeks after Granny Rose’s death I listened to my granddaddy rattle on about what a good woman she was, how she was kind and good and selfless and he never deserved her. He held on to her Bible, worn and wrinkled as it was by years of reading, like it would run away if he loosened his grip.
I remember Daddy watching after him when he was lying in bed all sick at heart over Granny’s passing, talking to him about what it was that made Granny a better sort than most. “It’s that Bible you’re clingin’ to there, Daddy,” he’d said. “It’s those words inside that Momma believed in so much that changed her heart and made her so good.”
Catching Moondrops Page 17
