It didn’t take more than a couple of weeks for Dr. Willie to understand he’d been replaced, that he should seek more fertile rows to hoe than Aurora Mae Stanton, which did not please him. He vowed revenge against the usurper Magnus Bailey. He was a small enemy, to be sure, but a large enemy can be turned to friendship when mutual gain is at stake, while a small enemy festers everlastingly looking for his chance.
XI
They took to having supper together. It was a convenient time to go over the day’s progress on the house, and they were both lonely, although neither would admit to such a pitiable state. Bailey didn’t know very much about the construction of homes with storefronts, but he knew enough to spot a goldbricker, which was all Aurora Mae required. She liked going with him to the worksite to watch him harass the men who’d been milking her. It gave her a sense of power to stand behind Magnus Bailey while he delivered invective and ultimatum. He might have been a sword or a gun she held in her hand, directing the slash and fire. When it was over, it pleased her to know the workmen who’d previously dismissed her concerns bowed to her retreating figure as she marched away, Bailey at the rear holding high over her head the pom-pommed parasol that kept the punishing rays of the Memphis sun from her proud, unvanquished brow.
One night, while they lingered over their coffee, taken in the lobby of Mama’s Morning Star Boarding House, where Aurora Mae had established herself while she awaited completion of her home, she made mention of her feelings.
It was different when my brother Horace and I worked together, she said. I had the things I did, he had his, and combined we made a life. But nowadays I’m doin’ things I never dreamed of havin’ to do before, and it’s been a world of help to have you. You’re somethin’ like a partner. I never had one of those.
Her words seared the inside of his chest like a hot iron pressed against the soft, sweet tissue of his lungs. This was the moment, the moment he’d been working toward from the git-go, the one that signaled his achievement of an inroad to the core of her fortune if only he played her right. Beyond that immediate goal, he saw before him the glittering path he might walk upon toward a confrontation with Minnie Fishbein, which would end in the emancipation of their eternal souls. Not for a heartbeat did it occur to him that the road to release from the sins of the past should be paved with only the smoothest, purest stones. That idea came later to his mind, and Aurora Mae’s sterling influence had not a little to do with its arrival. For the moment, what mattered was that he got where he wanted to go, not how he got there.
Even then, Magnus Bailey was not a monster. He admired Aurora Mae. He knew enough of her sad history to feel a warm compassion for her. She never spoke on the bits Mags Preacher McCallum told him about her past degradation. He could only guess about most of it. Her silence confirmed for him how deep her wounds went. Often, he wanted to ask her how she’d wound up at L’il Red’s that time and what his Minnie did to save her. There were nights, when he was alone in his bed, staring at the ceiling, grieving his mama, the Fishbeins, and times gone, that he would give his life’s blood to imagine Minnie in such a heroic role, yet he knew to press Aurora Mae for details would only hurt her and push her away. There was no advantage for him in being anything but helpful to her. At the same time, he was not above bending her will that he might win from her everything he could.
He took her hand.
Darlin’, he said. A partner is a very good thing to have in life.
He flashed his most seductive smile, hoping that the firelight of the lobby’s hearth would glint off his gold tooth and dazzle her.
She laughed from the depths of her considerable belly.
Oh my Lord, Magnus Bailey, she said. You are the very devil, aren’t you?
He shrugged but did not give up.
Why do you laugh? I may not be the man who strides up to your house in the woods with a bouquet of wildflowers and a worshipful air, but you’ve had that, haven’t you? And where did it lead?
He was singing in the dark, but the shadow that covered Aurora Mae’s features told him he’d struck his mark. He continued.
There’s been love gone wrong in my life too, he said. I have my regrets. They are big and heavy and blight me.
He slapped the tabletop. The boardinghouse cups and silverware jumped. Aurora Mae, whose head hung low in contemplation, snapped to. She raised her chin and studied him with an expression that was startled, querulous, and hopeful.
I am not suggestin’ that you and I traipse off into the sunset together, holding hands and whistling a song, he said. But we might keep each other company, you know, and help each other forget what needs forgettin’, and make right what needs to be made right.
I have so much of both, she said, and her great black eyes grew distant.
Though Bailey did not know the exact provenance of her sadness, sorrow was something he understood well enough. He spoke softly, wistfully, to give their hearts a place of convergence.
I do too, darlin’, he said. I do too.
He said it so earnestly, he convinced even himself her purse had nothing to do with his empathy. Aurora Mae put her hand over his fist, squeezed, then kept her hand there warming his. He knew they’d struck some kind of deal.
When the house was finished, he helped her settle in. They bought furniture together and set up the shelves and display tables of her shop, The Lenaka. The final day, the day before her opening, Aurora Mae was exhilarated, happy for the first time she could remember since long before the flood. She stood in the middle of her shop and regarded its appointments. Three walls of shelves were covered with bottles of liquid remedies in various sizes. The tables supported honeycombs of open wooden boxes in which fragrant herbs released their perfumes, making the air heady and thick. A glass case with a cash register on its countertop displayed rows of vials filled with powders, along with packets of bandages in a rainbow of colors. To the rear of the store was the entry to the living quarters, a curtain made of strung glass beads that cast prisms over the walls. Its valance was made of dangling chicken bones knit together with multicolored yarn.
It’s perfect, isn’t it? she said. Oh! but where is the sign? Do you have the sign?
Why, yes, I do. I put it up this morning while you were settin’ up in here.
They went out through the front door to inspect his handiwork. The little brass bell he’d installed in the door’s frame to warn her when a customer entered tinkled merrily. Aurora Mae squealed with delight. The sign hung from a short iron post just outside the front gate and read the lenaka, just as it should. As an aid to those who could not read, a variegated leaf dangling above a mortar and pestle was painted underneath the script. Behind the yard’s picket fence and to the left of the house were boxes planted with herb seedlings. In the back, rows of root vegetables were planted and a chicken coop constructed so that Aurora Mae might have access to some of her most common stock. A hothouse next to the chicken coop finished the place off. She was beside herself with joy. When she spoke, her voice was thick with sentiment.
Come inside, Bailey, she said. I’m going to make you one of my special teas to celebrate.
He had no idea what was in the brew she served him, but it made his head light. Soon they were laughing over next to nothing together. Aurora Mae sang his praises and her gratitude. Then she said, Look. You’ve helped me so much, let me help you. Why don’t you move in here, to the spare bedroom.
His green eyes went large and round.
Now, now, Miss Aurora Mae. Whatever would the neighbors say? he asked, and they both laughed, knocking into each other on the couch where they sat, drinking tea.
All at once, she grabbed his arm.
I’m serious, she said. I want to help you. I need to help you. Isn’t there some little business of your own you’d like to start up? I can be your partner. Isn’t that what you wanted? That we be partners? Don’t worry about the money. I swear
I have so much money I don’t know what to do with it. It burdens me. Sometimes I want to just give it all away. Why shouldn’t I start with you, who has been helpful to me?
Magnus Bailey did what came naturally, for him, anyway, if not Mags Preacher McCallum. He asked her how she got so rich.
Where’d your money come from, Aurora Mae? How is it there’s so much of it, with times bein’ hard and all?
She shrugged, looked at him steady straight in the eyes without a blink.
I found it, she said. It came to me in the flood like a chick to the roost.
He didn’t believe her, but he didn’t press her on it. Aurora Mae was entitled to her secrets as he was entitled to his. He next made a show of refusing her help until she begged some more, and then he said yes.
Although by the time he left her it had begun to rain, he walked over to L’il Red’s on his way back to Thomas DeGrace’s place. He stood in his usual spot across the street, cloaked in shadow, his gaze fixed on the whorehouse. His eyes moved from one window to the next, floor to floor. It was raining, it was hopeless that he should see her, and yet there he stood for more than an hour, talking to her in his mind, telling her that what was past was past and what could be in the future if she could bring herself to forgive him for setting her down the road to ruin. When his heart filled with the picture of her response, weeping and grateful, leaving with him, hand in hand, toward their bright paradise, he quit his hiding place to go pack up. The rain came down now in blinding sheets. He turned his collar up and ventured through the rain with his head up and his chest thrust out like a boy imagining high adventure.
At first, Magnus and Aurora Mae lived together as brother and sister. They shared their meals, their daily troubles and triumphs. At night, they sat together in the parlor listening to the radio or the phonograph. They grew close and fond. Every once in a while, Aurora Mae would forget herself and call him Horace.
Using her seed money, Magnus started up a business as a bail bondsman, a venture he’d found lucrative back in East St. Louis when his partner was old Fishbein. His clientele were crooks of every description and color, but his bread and butter were white boys who’d drunk themselves into a pile of trouble of a weekday night and needed to get sprung from jail before their daddies noticed they weren’t where they should be, boys who couldn’t call Daddy’s lawyer and depend on his discretion. He loved those boys, because none caused him a wakeful minute wondering if they’d skip. They gave him tips on the cotton and lumber markets where their daddies made their fortunes. Following up, Magnus Bailey doubled and sometimes tripled his money. The remainder of his clients he chose carefully for their roots in the community or the depth of their felonious pockets. His choices paid off. He lived modestly and banked most of his money. Come 1929, he figured he was just one more year from achieving the stake he needed, and then the crash came. His stocks floundered, and his bank failed.
The day it all fell apart, Aurora Mae came home from the market to the sight of Magnus Bailey weeping on the couch with a glass of neat bourbon in one hand and a revolver in the other. His collar was undone, his suit rumpled, his hair mussed. He talked to himself. His lips trembled. He didn’t notice she’d entered. Quietly, slowly, she went to his side. Locked as he was in the miseries, he did not so much as lift his head. She knelt before him and put her hands on his thighs. He stared straight ahead, as if her considerable presence were invisible, and muttered.
It’s over. All over. Can’t do it now. Couldn’t do it then. Three times now, I lost it all. I am cursed for my sins. Might as well die.
The hand that held the gun went up and pointed the weapon at his temple, but he had the shakes so bad Aurora Mae took it from him easily. As she got up to put it down far away from his grasp, she saw the bank paper on the mantelpiece and understood what had happened. Without hesitation, she sat down beside him and put her arms around him and drew him to her, cradling his head against the broad shelf of her chest, rocking him back and forth like her very own baby boy.
This all about money, Magnus? What a foolish thing to despair over. I have money. I told you. Don’t you remember? I have so much money I don’t know what to do with it. You’ll be alright. I’ll give you more. Look. Here’s some.
She got up, went to a floorboard he never knew was loose, and pried it up with the fireplace poker, then with the strength of two hands dragged a good-sized metal box from the space underneath. She opened it and scooped up a double handful of gold coin. She knelt at his feet and poured treasure into his lap. It made a clinkity-clink-clink as it fell, and light from the parlor windows made it shine. Magnus looked stunned at first, and then he started to laugh in a high voice, like a woman or a child.
Oh ’Rora, oh ’Rora Mae, was all he could manage to vocalize, so he clasped her in his arms while relief flooded his veins like wine, and perhaps because he was that grateful, perhaps because he was that drunk, perhaps because he finally knew where she stored her money, he took her to his bed, where she accommodated his desires half out of pity and half out of affection.
By dawn, Magnus Bailey found his fortunes restored and his life significantly complicated. Luckily, Aurora Mae did not make further carnal demands upon him straightaway. Under the implacable glare of morning’s light, not to mention sobriety and the restoration of his hopes, his fondness for her had settled back to its usual fraternal warmth, which harbored little erotic heat. This was no fault of her own, just the way of things with a man whose heart yearned in another direction. He got up, made her breakfast, served her in bed for a surprise, kissed the crown of her head as if he were her daddy instead of her lover, and went to his office where he had nothing special to do early on but where he could be alone to ponder the night’s events.
Leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk, a ribbon of sunlight glancing off his cheek and bow tie, he convinced himself that the change in his relations with Aurora Mae was a good thing, despite the responsibilities that commonly accompanied their new status. His first emotions toward her were anxious but deeply thankful. If she hadn’t come home when she did to offer him an escape from mortal melancholy, he might likely be dead. The insight made his head feel oddly light. It floated above his thoughts, remembering the gun and how close he’d come. He put his hands on the top of his scalp and pushed down, hard, as if stuffing realization back under his skull. Next, he acknowledged he’d been heading in the direction of intimacy with Aurora Mae all along. A man and a woman living together can’t help but come to it sooner or later. Still, he wondered who it was on her mind in the heat of the previous night, as it was obvious to him she was no more fully present than he was. That perception was probably the most comforting idea he had, one he’d repeat over and over to himself as time went by. She loves another, he thought, same as me. Like every deceiver, he sought justification for himself, and here is where he found it. To know that he was not the love of her life reconciled his conscience about his intent to leave her once he had enough money put by to rescue Minerva Fishbein.
Why, just as Minnie had rescued her! he realized suddenly. His feet swung off the desktop and hit the floor, raising a cloud of dust. Why, exactly like that! How could Aurora Mae blame him at the end of the day? The day she awoke to find him gone and knew with whom he fled, whenever that day came, would represent a balancing of the scales of justice. Now, wouldn’t it just? he thought. I will be merely the instrument of divine correction.
He convinced himself of all this in a single morning, in the hours after dawn and before the opening of the courtrooms he haunted daily, seeking caged men desperate to be free.
When he returned home that night, he found Aurora Mae had moved his belongings to her bedroom and set up a table on the side of the bed opposite hers for his convenience. Her efforts touched him. He praised her for taking the trouble to make him comfortable, to which she responded, I need the other room for family company, should any ever arrive.
; Even with Aurora Mae’s seed money, the rebuilding of Magnus Bailey’s savings was slow. Times were hard and grew harder every day. People were broke all over. Rich white boys drank moonshine at home. Criminals took a short sentence in jail for the three squares. One season passed into another, and he crawled toward his purpose when all his heart longed to sprint. In despair, he suggested to Aurora Mae that if she blended alcohol into her medicines, alcohol he’d acquire from contacts in the backwoods, folk’d beat down the door, but she was having none of that. That’s the trouble, he realized, with a woman of independent means. They did things out of principle rather than need, which robbed a man like him of leverage. After a great deal of thought, he realized he too possessed a measure of integrity, one that would prevent him from soaking Aurora Mae any more than he already had. She was a good woman, they’d grown quite fond. He couldn’t rob her.
He needed to branch out. He determined he must go see Minerva’s father and propose they work on a new venture. First, he took up his post outside L’il Red’s in the dead of night to tell the door and the windows and the balcony above the first floor porch what he was going to do and why.
You see, darlin’ Minnie, he told the brick and glass and wrought iron, I can’t imagine your daddy’s fortunes been doin’ any better than mine these days. Last I walked by, the old house was lookin’ awful raggedy. We always worked well together. I can go places he can’t and vice versa, that’s part of it. Also, we both got the mind for business. Maybe what we require is each other. If he’s strapped these days, I can put what I got on the table. I don’t know how I’ll approach askin’ him about you. I might just leave it alone and see if he brings you up. I don’t want to hurt him like that. But if he does, I’m going to tell him my plan to get you outta there and someplace safe. With me. Whether Gay Paree or anywhere similar you please.
Marching to Zion Page 14
