by H. M. Mann
I don’t have enough money for a cab.
So stiff him. You’ve done it plenty of times before.
And I only got maybe twenty dollars and some change.
You only need one little bag, right? One little ray of sunshine. That’s all, right? One little bag probably only costs twenty.
How will I get back?
Do you really want to come back to where everyone belongs but you?
I got to make money.
Right, right, so you can get you a bundle sometime soon. I hear you. Maybe Rufus has some extra money in here, you know, money you can borrow for a little while.
I can’t do that to Rufus.
He’s your bro’. He’ll understand. Why don’t you check under his mattress? That’s where country boys hide their money, you know. They don’t believe in banks like you do.
I don’t believe in banks.
Sure you do. That’s where the rest of your money is, right? That’s where you put it so you wouldn’t need it. Too bad you need it now, huh?
That money’s for Mary and Auntie June.
They won’t know. And Rufus won’t miss it till he gets hungry again.
Nah. What if he comes in? He has to change for night-duty.
Well, at least return his shirt to the dresser, and while you’re there, you can go through his stuff. If he comes in, he won’t suspect a thing. “Just puttin’ this shirt back,” you’ll say. He’s so simple he’ll believe anything you tell him cuz you’re from the big city of Pittsburgh while he’s from Pig-Come-Holler, Mississippi, where they ain’t never heard of liquid sunshine.
No, they haven’t.
He don’t know what it’s like, Manny, and you know it’ll feel so good. You’ll be right again, you’ll be straight again, and everything will make sense again.
Yeah. It’d be nice for everything to make sense again.
And you know, that Penny girl. I bet she’d go with you, maybe even join you. She’s like that, you know. She likes to party. Remember when you used to party, Manny? Remember when you used to kick it with them girls?
I remember. But I’m not trying to remember that. Mary cured me of all that.
But where’s Mary? She ain’t here, right? Just imagine what you and Penny could do in the big city of Cincinnati. Bet little Jessica Anne the three-quarter white girl has lots of money. You two could get a hotel room and everything. You know she wants you. She wants some of your black experience. Didn’t she touch your scars tonight? She didn’t flinch, did she? She’s interested, I can tell. She wants some of that liquid sunshine.
I can’t.
Sure you can. You know you want to. All she needs is a little pop the first time, right? I bet little Jessica Anne got enough hell in her to give you all kinds of heaven.
She’s just a kid.
Yeah. A sweet, young thing, all creamy and soft and lookin’ like Alicia Keys.
It ain’t right.
You know it is. You know you ain’t been right since you left Pittsburgh. Time to get right, Manny. Time to taste the sun over in Cincinnati. You owe it to yourself. Go on, now. Get to stepping.
I turn off the TV and the light and slip out into the corridor. My hands shake a little, and my mouth is full of cotton. I head to the galley. My legs feel sluggish and heavy, and I almost stumble down the stairs before crossing the darkened dining room. I hear Penny and Rose talking in the galley. If it was just Penny, I’d be set. Now what? I’ll wait out here in the darkness. Maybe Penny will come out first, and I’ll whisper to her, and she’ll go get some money, and we’ll get us a cab and find a corner then find us a hotel then …
I sit on a table. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but it sounds pretty serious, with Penny doing most of the talking. Maybe she’ll talk to me all night, too. Yeah, this is a plan. This is going to work. This is right. I’m in control again.
That’s right, Manny. You’re in control.
I wish Rose would go to bed. It’s nearly midnight.
She’d old, Manny. It won’t be long.
And I wish Penny would shut up. Her life story can’t be that long. But what if I can’t find any over in Cincinnati?
It’ll probably find you, Manny. It always does, doesn’t it?
Yeah. I just … I just need it, that’s all.
If you ever need anything, anything at all, you come to me, a different voice says.
What?
If you ever need anything, anything at all, you come to me.
Where’s the first voice?
If you ever need anything—
Not now, Rose. I’m not interested. I’m focused on a plan. You don’t have what I need, Rose. And you won’t help me get what I need, now will you?
If you ever need anything, anything at all, you come to me.
I grip my head in my hands. Now I have two voices in my head.
And if you need anything, just turn on your light. I’ll be able to see it wherever I am, a third voice says.
Slade, too?
I’m losing my mind!
And if you need anything, just turn on your light. I’ll be able to see it wherever I am.
You ain’t here, Slade. You have no idea what I’m going through. You got a good job and a nice family. You didn’t offer me nothing but water and soup anyway. That ain’t the kind of liquid sunshine I need now.
I’ll pray for you, Manny.
Mary!
I’ll never stop praying for us.
Make it stop!
The galley doors swing open, and I only see Penny. The scratchy voice returns.
Call out to her, fool!
I … I can’t.
She’s almost out of the dining room!
I just … I just can’t.
How do you expect to get right if you don’t take advantage of the situation? You have a plan, boy! Use it!
No.
I let Penny leave, then I go into the galley, and Rose doesn’t look surprised to see me.
“Tough night?” she asks.
I nod.
“For me, too, and not just because of what little Jessica Anne’s been telling me.” She goes to the refrigerator and takes out two Cokes. She hands one to me, and I nearly drop it. “I saw something in your eyes out on that bridge tonight. I’ve seen the same thing in my eyes in the mirror sometimes. Want to talk about it?”
I want to, but I don’t. I shake my head while the voices keep on arguing.
“Good for the soul,” Rose says, “or so a wise young man once told me.”
“Listen at you,” I say, and my voice breaks to a whisper. “Voices. Too many voices.”
“I got some of them, too,” Rose says, and she opens her arms to me. “Come here.”
I drop the Coke and nearly fall into her arms, sobbing, “I want them to stop, Rose, I just want them to go away.”
“Ooh, child, I wish I could tell you that they go away forever, but they don’t.” She grips my face in her hands. “But they get quieter in time. And they change, too. My ugly voice only talks to me at Christmas now, and my little boy isn’t crying as much anymore. He asks lots of questions still, but that’s what little boys do. And I answer him, because that’s what a mama is supposed to do.” She kisses my cheek and smiles. “How many voices you got up in there?”
“Four.” And maybe more.
“Four? Must be crowded up in there.”
“Yeah.”
“Are all of ‘em ugly?”
“No. Just one.”
“He’s the loudest one though, right?”
I nod.
“But the others? They’re nice?”
I nod. “You’re in there, Rose.”
“Yeah? No wonder I can’t make up my mind here lately. I’m up in your head helping you make up yours. What am I saying?”
“That if I need anything, anything at all, come to you.”
“And here you are.”
I crumple into her and weep, “This is hard, Rose, so hard.”
“If it
were easy, you wouldn’t be alive, so let it go, let it go, child, just let it go.”
And then I weep. It’s like I can’t control it, almost like I’m going through withdrawal again. But instead of throwing up, this time I’m throwing tears. I don’t know how long I cry, but Rose doesn’t let go, patting and rubbing my back, whispering “It’s all right” in my ear.
She wipes a tear or two of her own when I can finally breathe again. “You hungry? There’s still more pie left.”
“I’d like that.”
She fixes me a plate bursting with the rest of the pie. “You gonna be a hefty boy by the time you leave this boat.”
And as I eat, I let some of Rose’s sweet potato pie fill some of the emptiness inside of me while three voices gang up and silence the ugly one.
8: On the American Queen, Cincinnati to Louisville
But not for long.
You think you’re slick, don’t you?
Go away. I’m trying to sleep.
You know you’d sleep better if—
Shut up!
I ain’t going away, boy.
You’re nothing but the voice in my head.
“The Voice”! I like that nickname. Yeah. Makes me feel all powerful. And I am powerful, Manny. Don’t you ever forget it.
I get out of bed sweating and hit the shower, using as much hot water as my body and the postage stamp can stand, keeping my right arm out of the spray as best as I can. The water stings me so much that I start to dance, but it cures the sweats.
As I’m getting dressed, Rufus comes in.
“You’re up early,” he says.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“No, I mean, you’re up early. It ain’t but four AM. You got an hour to kill cuz the galley ain’t even open yet.” He shows me his empty hands. “I know, cuz I tried to get me some more of that pie. Y’all didn’t eat it all, did you?”
“No. But why are you in so early?”
“My relief, dude named Hugh, comes on early when we pull out of a big city with new passengers. Says it’s a tradition of his. I still get paid for my full shift, though.”
Rufus is a plain and simple man without a care in the world. Wish I could be like him, even for a few hours.
“What’s it like down in Mississippi?” I ask him.
“Why you want to know that?”
So I can hear about what makes you so happy. “I just haven’t been down there.”
“We gonna be running right along there after Memphis, so you’ll get to see Mississippi for yourself.”
“True. But what’s it like on your farm?”
His sits on his bed. “Let’s see. Right now, my daddy’s gettin’ up and puttin’ on his big ol’ black cowboy hat and his overalls. The hat comes first, then the overalls. Then he’ll probably be eatin’ hisself some bacon and eggs fried up in the same skillet.”
I smile. I have a feeling I’m going to be hearing a lot about food because Rufus is hungry now.
“In a bit, my brothers will join him, and then they’ll go on a long walk to check the pigs. We got us some massive pigs, let me tell you.”
“How do you, um, fatten them up?”
“Well, they eat like pigs, right? And we neuter most of the hogs so eating’s all they can think about.”
Ouch. “You neuter them?”
“Ain’t nothin’ to it. Two of us hold it down while one slices the sac and removes the balls, and then another puts some burnt motor oil on the sac to keep the hog from bleeding too much.”
This isn’t something they teach you about in school.
“Yeah, they squeal and holler, but then they go on about their business.” He smiles. “Once the sun comes up over Daddy’s three hundred acres—”
“That many?” I interrupt.
“It really ain’t much for a farm. Ain’t many farms left in Mississippi that ain’t owned by some big farmer. We’re probably the last black-owned and operated farm in southern Mississippi. They keep offering Daddy money to sell it off to them, but he keeps tellin’ them ‘No thank you, gentlemen, but I ain’t fixin’ to sell.’” Rufus smiles. “My daddy’s proud of his farm, which his granddaddy got and held onto during the Reconstruction when lots of other farmers gave up and went to the North.”
“How much money are they offering him?”
“I don’t know. I doubt even Mama knows. Daddy keeps everything hush-hush when it comes to money, and he has to have enough or he would have sold out by now, right? Anyway, I know that every barbecue joint all along the Gulf Coast serves my daddy’s pigs, yes sir.”
Must be nice to have something to leave to your sons. “What else do you do on the farm?”
“Shoot, that’s the easy part of the day. We got us a couple acres of cucumbers, you know, for pickles and such. Got cantaloupe and watermelon, too. Back-breaking work either picking ‘em and loadin’ ‘em or weedin’ or diggin’ …” His voice trails off. “But I miss it sometimes. You can walk my daddy’s farm all day and not see all of it.” He yawns. “Funny, but about the time I’m gettin’ ready for bed is the time my daddy and my brothers are just gettin’ started, like we all workin’ twenty-four hours a day, like they’re clockin’ in when I’m clockin’ out.”
I leave Rufus, promising to bring him some breakfast, and walk the darkened corridors and passageways to the galley. Penny sees me, smiles, and runs over to give me a hug before I can stop her.
“Girl, stop,” I whisper. “Folks are gonna talk.”
“Let ‘em.” She winks. “They gonna talk anyway, right? Might as well give ‘em something interesting to say.”
Penny’s hug is the best and most interesting part of my morning. I draw bacon and sausage duty and only get popped by grease a few times. Rose makes a plate of sausages and biscuits for Rufus and delivers it to him herself, so I’m stuck in front of the grill for five and a half hours of mind-numbing labor until I finally get a break since Mrs. Walker didn’t come for breakfast this morning.
“Go get some fresh air,” Rose tells me. “Come back in thirty minutes to help me with the sandwiches.”
“Another white history tour?”
“Yeah. Madison, Indiana. Bunch of old houses, and I hope they’re all filled with ghosts.”
I go to the very top of the American Queen today, back to the Calliope Bar, which hasn’t opened yet. I’m sixty feet off the water, and with the paddlewheel below churning a vicious wake and the smokestacks cranking out the black smoke, it’s like I’m riding a dragon flying over patches of unruffled water. I see live trees holding dead tree trunks high up in their branches along steep and rugged banks. The water must have been really high for that to happen. And colors. I see lots of colors Walt Disney would be proud of. The dark green of thick forests, the rainbow colors of wild flowers, the yellow water as thick as tomato soup, abandoned gray and white stone quarries, black railroad bridges like cobwebs in the sky—
“Blackberries ought to do good this year,” I hear Rose say.
I turn my head, and there she is, and she’s not in her kitchen.
She waves a hand over to the Kentucky side. “Just acres and acres of them.”
“You okay, Rose?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“That’s twice in one day you been out of your kitchen.”
She smiles. “Just tryin’ to add a little variety to my day.” She looks out over the water. “Towns are few and far between, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“But I like the names. Rising Sun. Rabbit Hash. Beaverlick.” She sighs. “It’s still all so new on this stretch, like we’re the first people to ever see it.”
We watch jagged rocks covered with moss sliding by. A few passengers begin flying kites off the back, and in a few minutes, they’re fighting to keep them from getting tangled.
“Further down the river and at night, when the passengers are safely stowed away in their cabins and the Calliope is closed for the evening, you can hear fiddles playing on the wind right where we’re stan
ding. Someone on the Indiana side starts it, and someone on the Kentucky side adds to it, and after a while you have a little duet going, the notes flying right over this boat.” She squeezes my arm. “It’s what us old ladies do when we don’t have good company.”
“I’d like to hear that sometime.”
“See me after Louisville. I don’t think Rufus and Penny would enjoy it. They’re too young, while we’re old-school, right?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“You sleep okay?”
No. The Voice won’t leave me alone. “Yeah.”
“Any day you need a day off to sleep in, you let me know.”
“I will.”
Rose and I again make the sandwiches, and when we land at Madison, the passengers stream off the boat. I ask Rose why they’re riding the boat in the first place if they keep getting off so much.
“Same reason we got off in Covington, I suspect. Cabin fever. You can’t stay on a boat forever, right?”
Mrs. Walker creeps into the dining room a little after noon, and I serve her again up on the Porch. “Sorry I missed you at breakfast,” she tells me, dangling another twenty. “I just couldn’t get my knees to work this morning.”
I take the twenty without comment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Bad knees run in my family, you know.”
That almost made sense. “They do?”
“They do. My husband had bad hips, and I have bad knees. We creaked along fine together for fifty-four years, though.” She sighs. “He was a fine man, my husband.”
Since I don’t have much to do until dinner, I take a seat near her. “What was he like?”
“You’ve never heard of Roger Walker?”
“No ma’am.”
“You’ve never heard of Walker Paper?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”
She blinks at me. “Walker Paper is still one of the biggest paper mills in the South, if not the world.”
So Mrs. Walker gets her paper from paper. “Oh.”
“And Roger built that company up from nothing down in south Georgia to what it is today.”
