Stark was used to getting good labor from a mean word or the shake of a noose and was surely put out by negotiating with freed people, who were beginning to see sharecropping for what it really was. Many left the Bottoms unsure if they would survive the journey to God only knew where. After the Freedmen’s Bureau refused rations for those who refused to work or couldn’t, the strong ones lived off the land for as long as a seed could be found. The elders suffered till death, bewildered that they had lived to see freedom and would die hungry because of it.
Many expected that part of the valley to perish and did their part to help death along. Soldiers stationed to ease the transition took food and anything else they could carry away, including girls and women. Little Tunis made a ruckus till they found Black Pete, the logger, floating in the creek with a pair of chicken feet where his eyes used to be and his thing stuffed in his mouth. At Old Elam Baptist Church they mumbled that the Good Book had lied; the meek surely wouldn’t inherit the earth.
If not the earth, in 1905 it seemed they had inherited some other fortune, May-Belle thought. Today marked forty years of freedom. Lemon was forty-four, Ennis forty-six. Timbo wasn’t in the county jail. Despite her visions, Irabelle was a happy child, beloved by other children, so maybe she didn’t notice when grown women sucked their teeth or rolled their eyes when she passed. And Miss Ivoe was on her way to Austin, proof of something they used to say back in Alabama: “Sometimes it takes generations for opportunity to come, but if you keep on living, it will show up.”
Balancing an armful of pies, Lemon glanced around her yard. Three children, each having their own way with her heart: Timbo twisting it in worry; Irabelle stirring it in wonder; and Ivoe making it beat wild with pride.
“Got a lot to be grateful for this year,” she said to Zilpha Stokes. “Our girl’s on her way. And don’t think I don’t know it’s ’cause you been more than a teacher to her these years—you been a friend. Me and Ennis appreciate you taking the time with her, telling her things we don’t have half a mind to tell her. Helping her to school and all.”
At that moment, she saw Ennis welcome the Al-Halif family as they entered the yard.
“Mrs. Williams, Ivoe was made at home. You and your husband did all the molding. The most I ever did was clear the bramble off her path,” Zilpha said.
Irabelle ran laughingly between her mother and the teacher, chased by the Al-Halifs’ daughter and a little boy with skin like a bruised peach and golden hair. He belonged to a Moravian family newly arrived in Starkville.
“Times sure have changed, ain’t they? Go on and fix yourself a plate, Zilpha. Plenty to eat,” Lemon said, as she watched Timothy pull something from his shirt pocket and wave his hand before two young men she did not recognize. When they started away from the house she called out, “Timbo, time for you to eat. Say good-bye.”
“They just some fellows passing through from Bryan,” Timbo said, as he crossed the yard in her direction.
“You talking sugar but you giving salt. Just ’cause they both white don’t mean they taste the same. Passing through, my foot.”
“All right, Momma. They just come to tell me about a game. The dice level out my thinking.”
“Boy, you grieve me. All the time chasing the wrong things so the right things can’t catch you. Papa told you. I told you. Leave them devilish dice alone. Don’t play with Roena, Timbo, that ain’t the thing to do. Gonna fool around and lose that girl.”
A gleam in his eye brighter than the North Star, Timothy tucked a coin in her apron pocket. As long as luck was with him, that boy wouldn’t pay her no mind. Afraid to try but not scared enough to lose and he didn’t even know the difference.
“I done said what I had to say. I’m gone away from it.”
Later that evening Lemon stood on the porch between Ennis and May-Belle with a little brown jug.
“Zilpha, you want a taste of this whiskey? Maybe that one over there will fetch you a glass. You ain’t in Austin yet, missy,” Lemon called across the yard to Ivoe, reading the newspaper.
Before Ennis could put down the jug, Irabelle was at his feet, tugging on his pant leg to remind him of their routine. The first taste belonged to her, but because it was Juneteenth he nudged the bottle with the toe of his shoe to say she could have the last swig too. Irabelle jumped off the porch, her hair flowing like raven yarn. She twirled and blew into the empty jug, thinking of the women loggers down by the creek. Everyone clapped except Lemon.
Irabelle was a pretty child with few traces of her or Ennis. Except for the creamy skin of golden corals she was every bit of Lemon’s mother, Iraj, down to the small mouth and pronounced cheekbones. Her beauty was the easy kind. Folks gave themselves over to it quickly. But quick as looks caught them, looks could lose them. She wanted her daughter to cultivate something besides the accident of features, something that would earn loyalty, kindness, and make the right people want to be around her. Irabelle craved no more attention than her other children had at that age, but she was too young to know the trouble beauty brings. Beauty cowed folks too weak to resist it, embarrassed those shamed in their own skin. Irabelle was courting envy, inviting confusion, and didn’t even know it.
“All right, all right now,” Lemon gruffed. “Folks didn’t gather on this pretty day for you to entertain them.” She beckoned for the jug and rolled her eyes at Ennis. “I don’t know what you give it to her for. Ain’t done nothing but made extra work for me. Come morning, I’m liable to find that jug in pieces all over the yard.”
Irabelle slipped past her mother’s reach and scampered over to Timothy and Roena.
“You best give it to Momma, lessen you want one of them boo-hags to get you ’cause you at the age when they like to snatch little girls bald,” Timbo said.
Irabelle’s eyes grew big as saucers.
“You seven, ain’t you?”
“Yep. Old enough to know ain’t no such a thing as a boo-hag.”
“Just wait and see.”
“Ivoe?’ Irabelle said anxiously.
On the pallet beneath the fig tree, Ivoe was reading the paper. The headline gasped: “Shocking Incident in Snook! Negro Man Robs Widow!” A complete account of the crime scene included a full description of the perpetrator, who sounded to Ivoe like every man she knew in Little Tunis.
“Ivoe!” Irabelle repeated.
“Don’t pay Timbo no attention. The butter slipped off his noodle a long time ago,” Ivoe said.
Roena chuckled.
“Some folks all right till they get two pairs of britches,” Timothy muttered in Ivoe’s direction.
“Papa, ain’t no boo-hags that take girls’ hair, is it?”
Ennis tore off a piece from the hunk of brisket on his plate, looked down at Bunk waiting expectantly, and flung it. “Well, let me see. How good is your ciphering? When was Ivoe your age?”
“Nine years ago,” Irabelle chimed.
“Far as I can remember your sister never did lose no hair. Leastwise not to no boo-hag. I believe once she might’ve lost a bit wrestling with some Indian children.”
May-Belle and Lemon laughed.
“That rascal Timbo just pulling your leg. ’Cause even if it was a boo-hag after you, Papa would just get a ghostdog to take care of it. Papa told you about ghostdogs, didn’t I?” Ennis sat his plate on the porch, leaned forward, and rubbed his knees the way he did every time he was about to settle in for a story.
Irabelle shook her head, cautiously eyeing Bunk as he stretched out. Sometimes the boys in the churchyard talked about haint dogs, she recalled, climbing into her father’s lap.
Ivoe closed the paper and sat up. To hear her father tell a story was to witness great art. His voice resonated with power, wrapping itself around the listener like a quilt on a cold night, while his big hands painted vivid pictures to match his words, sturdy like oak—words you could live in until the wa
rm baritone caught fire; then you were sure to burn in excitement.
“Used to be Saturday was the day cotton pickers would come from all around and have a slap-bang-up time jugging and jawing just like we doing today. While the sun was making up its mind on when to set, somebody would commence to playing on the banjo or the fiddle. Nobody never did the musician no dirt about paying him neither. He could count on getting at least a dollar for the night. Sometimes we danced till the rooster crowed on Sunday morning. May-Belle, you remember what we used to say? We had us a saying back then: ‘If a white man could be a Negro in the Bottoms just one Saturday, he never would want to be white no more.’”
May-Belle let out a lazy laugh where the first note was drawn out like the final whistle of a freight train.
“Once, a fiddler was late getting off from Snook on account of he brought his baby brother with him. See, they momma had just died and they daddy was working all the time, so the fiddler had to keep the little one with him.”
Irabelle nestled against her father’s warm chest that vibrated when he spoke, tickling her back a little. Momma had just the right words to fit Timbo. Even if he didn’t mind her all the time, he listened. May-Belle and Ivoe had their own special talk; you could tell it by all their private laughter. But Papa melded words just for her.
“Well, they’s traveling and the fiddler’s getting a little tired, but he don’t wanna stop because he worried about reaching the Bottoms late. See, he don’t want nobody bird-dogging for the dance he fixing to play for. Well, the fiddler’s baby brother commenced to looking real pitiful and starts in with how his little legs is aching him. Fiddler know he can’t hardly make it with the boy, but where in the world can he leave him?”
Irabelle curled her fingers around one of Papa’s ears, burying her other hand in his coarse hair.
“The fiddler scratched at his head.” Ennis scratched his own head. “What was he gonna do? That’s when he noticed an ole cottonseed house a piece-ways down the road. He was plum tickled about finding a place to leave baby brother, so he snatched the little rascal up like this here”—he grabbed Irabelle around the waist, holding on to ensure she didn’t fall from his lap—“and took off running. When they reached the house his tongue was hanging out his mouth just like a dog what been chasing a rabbit. He takes his brother by one hand, his fiddle in the other, and climbs up the ladder and through the window. Cottonseed piled so high in there—almost to the top of the ceiling—that baby brother barely have room to stretch hisself out. He finally get fixed so he can lay down. Fiddler gives him a paper sack with some ginger snaps in it and tells him he’ll be right back. Now, the fiddler ain’t been gone but a minute when baby brother hears a puffing noise and raise his head to see what the trouble is. What you reckon he saw?”
Irabelle hunched her shoulders. She couldn’t bear to delay the story with guesswork.
“A great big ole puff of smoke come through that window and scared baby brother, so he commenced to shaking like the front wheel of your papa’s cart. Took him a long time to get up enough courage to look. What you think he saw this time? A great big white dog was looking down at him. Scared him so bad he started in to hollering and peed hisself too. He thinking that dog gonna bite him for sure, maybe even carry him off somewhere and he won’t never see his big brother again. But the dog stayed right where he was. Didn’t budge an inch. Didn’t make a sound. Finally, the little boy see the dog don’t act like he got any interest in biting him so he doze off. His brother’s fiddle wakes him up. Ghostdog still standing over him too. But before the fiddler reach the house the dog turn into smoke again and floated out the window. When the fiddler climbed in, baby brother told him what happened. His brother allowed that the dog was they momma what done come back from the grave to keep a watch over the little one so he could earn a little money playing music for the cotton pickers to dance.”
The Williamses lounged beneath a cornflower-blue sky all afternoon. The chickweed grass, coarse and brilliant green, gave the earth a spongy feel beneath Ivoe, who lay stretched out with the newspaper over her stomach. The branches of a blackjack oak stirred a slight breeze for Roena and Timothy while they played cards in the fleeting twilight. Lemon crossed before Ennis’s chair, causing his eyes to light up like stars as he reached out to pat her behind. Irabelle, playing in May-Belle’s hair, watched a jaybird flutter away from the fig tree just as Bunk rolled onto his stomach, extending his forepaws on the porch he dusted with a fanning sweep of his tail. For a moment nothing stirred except now and then the call of a screech owl. They didn’t have much but this happiness was their own.
.
Momma could look at a long face all day without it getting to her, Irabelle thought, but Papa was different. A poked-out mouth and droopy chin did the trick. “Come on then—with your sad face on.” Her first time away from Little Tunis marked a special occasion. Momma had even let her wear her best Sunday go-to-meeting dress—pink polka dot cotton with scalloped redwork trim—to escort Papa to Snook.
After Papa’s business, they strolled about town hand-in-hand. On Snook’s Main Street she heard the sweetest sound coming from the shop on the corner. Papa must’ve liked it too because he stopped to listen. On account of the hawthorn hedge, which she recognized by its little white flowers that would give way to tiny red berries come fall—one of Momma’s favorites—she couldn’t get close enough to the window, so Papa picked her up for the first time since she was five, two years ago. Together they watched the wood box with a plate spinning ’round and ’round beneath a giant golden bellflower.
“How you think them tiny people got in there? See, it’s iddy-biddy people no bigger than your pinky toe down there making that pretty music come out.”
Irabelle let Papa pull her leg while she wondered about the music. This was nothing like the singing and moaning she heard at Old Elam Church—no banjo plucking, or whining fiddle either. The shopkeeper said it was an a-ree-ah from an opry called Bow-He-Men Girl. She didn’t know what a Bow-He-Men Girl looked like or did, but from that day forward she was going to be one—unless Ivoe told her that was no kind of thing for a colored girl to be. Ivoe was always telling her what she ought to want to be and do.
“That right there sounds like the wind whistling pretty to me,” Papa said. You could tell he didn’t know about opry either. The shopkeeper said a clarinet made that pretty whistling sound.
“I want a clarinet.”
Ennis recalled Juneteenth when Irabelle had played the little brown jug. The tax bill was coming due but his decision was made. “Sir, how much for the music and that what you play it on?”
The clerk glanced at the money in Ennis’s hand and laid his newspaper aside. Generally he didn’t do any dirt by Negro customers because their money spent like anybody else’s. The Snook Chronicle was to blame. Every day for the last week some Negro’s face was blasted on the front page accompanied by a story about a robbery, a fire, or some kind of mischief. He told Ennis to hold on while he got everything together and disappeared to the back room. In his call to the sheriff, he described his customers as well-dressed Negroes with more money than a Negro ought to have. He wrapped the Edison Home Phonograph and returned to the front of the store.
There was the usual hem-hawing about the heat between the shopkeeper and the deputy while the sheriff studied Ennis. His hands were blistered and calloused; he’d picked enough cotton for three people. “A Victrola’s mighty frivolous, boy.” He eyed the pretty little girl whose legs, the color of wheat stalks, put him in the mind of a beautiful boy he knew in his youth. The sheriff turned Irabelle away from the phonograph and patted her head. Hair as soft as Ory’s had been. Squatting at her feet, his gaze met with the most extraordinary dark violet eyes. He tried to soften his own face to coax a smile from the child, but she only stared back at him, twisting the ends of her dress. He unfastened each finger from the dress bottom and, gripping the edges himself, pulled the
dress taut.
Irabelle wobbled a little.
“You like music?”
Irabelle turned to look at her father. Papa nodded so she did the same.
“You got a name?”
“Irabelle,” she whispered.
The simple action of rising to his feet seemed to require effort from the sheriff. He had been at the jailhouse very late last night keeping watch over two colored boys. Then, like now, his lust had surprised him. Instead of pouring out for his wife, it seemed only to spring forth for the most pitiful. He yanked Irabelle in front of him, his hands on her shoulders like heavy weights, and looked at Ennis.
“Who are you, boy?”
“Ennis Williams, sir. That’s my youngest child there, Irabelle. We from Little Tunis.” Wasn’t no shame in being a colored man, but it sure in the hell was tedious at times. For every question they asked you, you better give at least three answers.
“What’s your business in Snook?”
“I’m a blacksmith, sir. Come to collect my pay on a job I did for Mr. Jacobson. My baby girl ain’t never seen these parts, so soon as my business ended we set in to take in your town.”
The county jail never stayed so full as it did in June, thought the sheriff. Something about Juneteenth made Negroes step out of line. “Whereabouts you say you from?”
“Little Tunis—”
“Them darkies that live in the bottoms of Starkville,” the deputy added.
The sheriff leaned down to Irabelle’s ear and said in a kindly voice, “Your daddy’s fixing to buy some music so you can listen at home. I bet you’d like that. Wouldn’t you?” The sound of her “yes,” bright as a bell, could have belonged to Ory. He gripped the bony shoulders too hard before turning his attention back to Ennis. “You say you was here doing work for Jacobson?”
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