Madewell Brown

by Rick Collignon

  After settling in, he began to ask around about what might have happened to folks he’d known from years before. What he found out was that thirty-seven years is a long time in a place like South Cairo. No one seemed to remember who he or any of those other people he asked about were.

  For a while, those he’d stop on the streets or hacking weeds in their yards would listen to him kindly. But when his talk drifted to baseball, as it always did, a thin look of impatience would cross their faces. They’d shake their heads and give him a smile that meant nothing at all.

  “You and that colored ball,” they would say. “Open those eyes of yours, Obie Poole. There’s black men playing in the World Series now.” And then they’d go back to what they were doing, leaving Obie to wander off. And as he made his way home, he knew that they all thought he was just another crazy man who had fallen into their midst. That there wasn’t a soul on earth who could have done all the things he claimed to have done.

  The only one who bothered to help him out at all was the crippled lady who owned Peter’s Grocery. Lydola Peterson told him that she recalled hearing about a bunch of boys once taking to the road to play ball. But for the life of her, she couldn’t remember who those boys had been or who their families were or even where she’d heard such things. What she did remember, though, was that back in 1936 two events had occurred that had forever changed South Cairo.

  “The Cairo Slaughterhouse burned down,” she told him, packing his bag with canned soup and tobacco. “It burned down one cold winter morning and left every last family in South Cairo out of work and owed money they never was going to get. I was newly married at the time this happened.” She ticked out some air and shook her head. “The flames were so big it looked like the river was on fire.”

  Lydola was years younger than Obie, but her hair was bone white and sparse, her spine so twisted it kept her half bent over. Her skin was discolored, and one foot was clubbed and hidden away in a thick leather shoe. There was never anybody in the store but Lydola. What became of her husband, she never did say. She told Obie that the boiler in the slaughterhouse basement had blown and in no time at all the flames had eaten up the paper-thin walls to the roof. She said it happened so fast that there was nothing to be done but stand back and watch.

  “There was a white man got himself burned up,” she went on. “I don’t remember his name, but no one cared about him anyway. He was a poor, dim-witted soul who wasn’t much use to anybody. All they found of him was some charred bones.”

  She leaned back against the counter and twisted her head around to look up at Obie. “Rain and sleet was falling that morning,” she said. “But even so, you could feel the heat come washing across the river. And the sounds those poor animals made. Cows and lamed horses and old hogs screaming like crazy women. And if that wasn’t bad enough, a few months later the floods came.”

  In the spring of that same year, she told him, the river rose ten feet over its banks and flooded nearly all of South Cairo. Whole houses were dragged away by the current, and those that weren’t were left bloated with mud and water and a white mold that got deep into your lungs and sickened whoever breathed it. River rats swarmed everywhere, and coils of water moccasins hung from tree limbs. It took two months for the water to finally get back to where it belonged, and by then most everyone who lived near the river was gone.

  “I don’t know who you asking about, Obie Poole,” she said. “Most likely they all gone after so long. But what I do know is you might want to think about keeping your stories to yourself. This place has had enough bad times. It don’t need to be reminded of lost souls that might have lived here or even that Negro ball you always talking about. You go home and sit on that porch of yours and let the sun warm your bones. Find yourself a little peace, Obie Poole.”

  For the most part, Obie didn’t much care what people said about him or what they thought. He had a lifetime packed away in his skull and if no one was interested in what was in there, then that was their own bad luck. He’d lived his whole life moving about in crowds, and he was done with all that.

  He spent his time fixing up his house and driving out the wasps and snakes that had taken to nesting in the walls. He kept the swamp grass cleared back to keep down the bugs and cut paths through it so as to have a place to walk

  In the late afternoons, he’d rest out on his porch. He’d chew his tobacco and gaze off at the river that never stopped flowing, thinking that the years passing him by weren’t all that much different from one of those ball games where not one damn thing would happen. The comfort in those games had nothing to do with the score but was in the quiet wait for what might come. Then Obie would wonder what Syville or Madewell or any of those other boys would say about a thing like that.

  “I guess it don’t matter what you’d say,” he muttered. “You all gone anyway.” He leaned forward and let loose a thick stream of tobacco juice. “I got myself a nice slow game going here. And it ain’t ever going to end.”

  Obie would think like that right up to the moment Rachael Parish came strutting her way into his life.

  Obie had been back in South Cairo for twenty-eight years when he and Rachael met. The day she came messing up his life was no different from any other. As usual, he’d gotten up early and made himself a pot of coffee and two slices of toast. And then he had gone outside to take a look at the morning.

  The air was cool and still. The grass was folded over with damp. A thin haze hung over the river and above it the sky was beginning to swell with light. The sad moan of a mourning dove came from the trees down by the river, and from far off came the dull barking of a tied-up dog.

  For a while, Obie stood there sipping his coffee, wondering what he should do with this day. A deep ache was eating at his hips, and the bones in his ankles felt thin and brittle. He put his cup down on the railing and leaned forward a little bit to ease the pain. Then, with a quick hard jerk of his hand, he sent his toast flying off into the grass.

  “I don’t need to do nothing if I don’t want to,” he mumbled. He limped back inside the house to wait for the sun to burn away the damp.

  By the time Obie made his way back outside, the sun was high and the air was full of dry heat. The summer rains had ended a few weeks before and the cattails were burnt and browned out. He dragged his chair into the shade beneath the eave of the house and sat down. He leaned his head back against the wall and folded his hands across his stomach. A flock of small swamp birds was flitting about just past the porch. Obie watched them hop from one cattail to another until, like every other day, his eyes closed and he dozed off.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he became aware of something making its way through the weeds near his house. At first he thought it might be mule deer walking down to the water for a drink. Or maybe that pack of dogs he’d seen now and again roaming the riverbank for washed-up garbage or dead fish. Whatever it was, he thought, it was making one hell of a noise. He cracked open his eyes and when he turned his head, he caught sight of a little boy and two girls making their way through the tall grass at the edge of his house.

  They were walking in a line and carrying sticks to keep the snakes at bay. The boy was last. He was short and stocky, and every so often he’d glance edgewise at the house like he knew they were where they shouldn’t be. The girl in front of him was built similarly and looked close enough to be his big sister. A line of belly fat was hanging over the top rim of her shorts and a sour look was on her face. But Obie only gave those two a quick glance. It was the girl leading the way who caught his eye.

  She was mouthing out a song and swinging her stick at the grass like she was holding a ball bat. She was a skinny girl, taller than the other two, and she moved almost like a boy somehow—slow and easy and still too young to know how good she was. Obie sat in the shade on his porch and listened to her sing in a high, reedy voice.

  “I know a boy who’s as sweet as pie,” she sang, and slash went her stick at the grass.


  “I know a boy who can make me cry.

  I know a boy who’ll make me bad.

  I know a boy who’ll make me sad.

  Jump high, sweet girl, and don’t come down.

  The rope gonna catch you and knock you down,” and here she beat at the weeds like she was trying to kill them.

  Obie let out a grunt and roused himself. “Hey,” he yelled out. He leaned forward and slapped his hand down hard on his thigh. “Who you think you are? You go on now and get out of here.”

  The fat little girl gave a jump. She turned around like she’d been shot at and went running. But the boy stopped dead in his tracks and then edged back a foot or two.

  “That’s right,” Obie said to him, nodding his head. “You go on home. And don’t come back here no more.” Then he turned his eyes to the girl in front.

  She was standing with her face turned away from him, one hip cocked out. At first he wondered if she were deaf. She was swinging her stick like she hadn’t heard a word he’d said, and even though she’d stopped her singing, her upper body was moving from side to side as if the song was still going in her head. It struck him that not only had she heard every word he’d said but she didn’t give a good damn one way or the other about it.

  “Go on now,” he said to her, flapping his hand. “You trespassing on my property.”

  “This isn’t your property,” the girl said, as quick as that.

  “Well, it sure as hell ain’t yours,” Obie said, his voice raised.

  “We walking the path down to the river,” she said, without so much as a glance at him.

  “I don’t give a damn where you going,” Obie said. He’d known this girl just one short minute and here they were, having an argument. “You want a path to walk on, go somewhere else and make your own.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy take a step forward.

  “You going the wrong way, boy,” Obie yelled at him. It occurred to him that things were getting a little out of hand. If he wasn’t careful he might end up with a bunch of worthless kids running all over his property. He made to rise out of his chair. “Now you get your fat butt out of here before I do something.”

  “Rachael,” the boy called out, his voice high and pinched, “I’ll meet you back home.” And he began to move backward, around the corner of the house.

  “We’re going down to the river,” Rachael said, as if the boy hadn’t spoken to her. She was standing still now, pointing her stick off toward the river as if that, too, belonged to her.

  “Goddamn it, girl,” Obie said, shaking his head. “I don’t care where you going. You just go some other damn way.” In all this time, she hadn’t bothered once to look over at him. She was wearing a pair of raggedy shorts and her T-shirt was pressed tight and flat against her chest. She’d done her hair in tight braids, and each one was wound with a little bit of dirty ribbon. She didn’t look any different from any other little girl he’d seen wandering the streets of South Cairo.

  “You go on now,” he said to her, his voice calmer. “Before I find out who your mama is and have a talk with her.”

  “I don’t have a mama,” Rachael said. She lowered her stick and took a swing at a clump of thistles. “She run off when I was little and stuck me in the South Cairo Home.”

  Obie let out a grunt. “Well, that don’t surprise me none. If you was my little girl, I’d run off and leave you, too.”

  At that moment, the sun dipped below the trees along the far side of the river. A shadow ran across the swamp grass, pushing a little wind ahead of it. Obie shut his eyes and leaned back so that the breeze cooled the heat on his neck. “My,” he said softly. “Don’t that feel nice.” He moved his head back and forth slowly and pulled his shirt away from his skin. Then he let out a long breath and opened his eyes.

  The girl was still there, but now she was turned around facing him. For a moment, Obie just sat in his chair and stared at her, his mouth half open.

  “Hey,” he breathed out. “I know you.” In that second, he could have sworn that instead of a skinny little girl, Madewell Brown was standing not twenty feet away. There he was, his long arms dangling, his mouth wide and easy. He was gazing just off to one side, as if he could see something no one else could. And he was holding himself the way Obie remembered—a little on his toes like anything might happen.

  “Madewell,” Obie whispered harshly, “where’d you come from?” Then something shifted in the air and what he’d seen was gone. Where Madewell Brown had been was that girl standing in the swamp grass. Obie pushed out of his chair and went over to the railing.

  “What’s your name, girl?” he asked.

  Rachael didn’t answer. She could see that the old man was leaning so far over the railing that he might topple over and break his neck. She thought that he was just another old man who didn’t have anything better to do than mess with people. She looked away and started tapping her stick on the ground.

  “My name’s Rachael Parish,” she said finally, her voice singsonging again. “That’s what my mama named me. Not something dumb like Madewell.”

  Obie could see how high her forehead was and how the slant of her eyes gave her almost a sleepy look. Again he shook his head. “You got your granddaddy written all over you. Come here so I can get a good look at you.”

  “Ha,” she spat out, taking a step back. Already she knew enough about men to keep her distance. Even from one this old. “You a crazy old man living way out here by yourself. I don’t have a granddaddy. I never had a granddaddy.”

  “You sure as hell had a couple of them once,” Obie said. All of a sudden, he saw Madewell and Syville and James Lee and all the rest of them as boys. If they hadn’t been playing ball, they’d been running every which way over beaten-down paths through the flat grass. They’d all grown up here along the river. And then, like it was some kind of grand plan, the whole bunch of them had left South Cairo together. Now he wondered if all the while he’d been sitting here getting old, that plan hadn’t been moving along without his noticing. How else could he explain this girl wandering into his life from nowhere?

  “You think it’s an accident you here?” he asked her. “Well, it ain’t. So let me just tell you a thing or two. I played ball with a man named Madewell Brown my whole damn life and never did I see the likes of him. You put a ball in that man’s hand and he’d turn bats into kindling and buckle a man’s knees so bad he looked the fool.” Obie leaned closer, spit bunched at the corners of his mouth. “He once threw a ball so damn hard that it tore through the webbing of Syville’s glove and broke the home plate umpire’s arm at the wrist. I played ball with him my whole life. Yes sir, I surely did.”

  It was getting dark and swarms of mosquitoes were clouding the air. Rachael could feel them lighting on the backs of her arms and legs. She let her stick drop, leaned over and brushed her hands along her legs. The old man was still talking, but he was staring off at the river like he’d forgotten she was even there.

  I’m not ever going to come back here, she thought. Then she spoke the words out loud. As she walked away, the old man called out at her.

  “You full of that Madewell Brown, little girl,” he said. “You be back. I know you be back.”

  Two days later, Rachael went back to see Obie Poole. And this time, she went alone.

  He was sitting in the same exact place as before, fanning his face with a piece of cardboard, his legs stretched out and crossed. Rachael wondered if he was living every day out on this rickety old porch. She watched him lean to one side and spit. Then he settled back in his chair.

  “I knew you’d be back,” he said.

  Off to one side of the old man, the door to the house hung wide open. Inside, Rachael could see a square of daylight coming in through a small window in the far wall. It made it seem as though there wasn’t anything in there except shadows. Just then the old man shifted in his chair and drew his legs up. The scraping sound of his shoes startled her.

  Obie let out a laugh a
nd shook his head. “Where’s that sassy little girl who was here before?” he said.

  For a moment, the two of them looked at each other. Rachael was wearing clothes that were too big for her. Baggy pants and a soiled shirt that fell far below her waist. Hand-me-downs, Obie thought. Hand-me-downs from that South Cairo Home. Her hair was undone now and she looked somehow smaller and older than she had a few days before.

  “Hey,” he said, “where’s that girlfriend of yours? And that boy. The fat boy.”

  Rachael shrugged her shoulders. “They’re back home,” she said. “They didn’t like it here.”

  “I bet they didn’t,” Obie said, nodding. He wiped his mouth clean with the back of his arm and laid his head back against the wall. “So what?” he said. “You just come out here to get a good look at me?”

  Rachael took a step forward. “My mama ain’t ever going to come back for me,” she said, the words rushing out of her mouth. “She’s no better than her own mama was.”

  Obie let out a grunt. “Well,” he said, “you ain’t alone in that,” and then he moved his eyes past her. Dark, heavy clouds were building up far west of the river. He thought that later it would rain and the two of them might still be out here tossing words at each other. When he looked back at her, he could see that she had edged a little closer.

  “I know what you come for,” he said. He let his hands rest still on his legs and waited for her to say it.

  Rachael was so close to the porch now that she could have reached out and touched it. The old man was gazing down at her, his jaw moving back and forth. His hands were laid out flat, the knuckle joints swollen and raw. She let her fingers rest on the edge of the porch deck and peered through the slats.