Mr. Calhoun stands and places a little hand-carved wooden ark in Jess's right hand.
I recognize some from the schoolhouse, others I don't. There is the black man without a hand. Heard tell he was trying to read and write and his master cut his hand off. He's carrying a Bible with his one hand and he reaches in and leaves that book with Jess. They all have something to give Jess, for where he's going in that sweet afterlife, there's no telling what he'll need.
Then the people sing "Been Toilin' at the Hill So Long" while Jess's momma lays a new asafetida bag in Jess's left hand.
I'm so sad I can't cry.
It is like I see them all for the first time and my heart is heavy, heavy with hurt and worry for what I seen, what I see now, and what I know. This feeling I have is bigger than the sad feeling I have had for Momma and Pappy. I grieve so much that my heart feels heavy in my breast.
"Are you for religion?"
"Well, sure I am, Addy," Little Bit whispers.
"Is there a heaven for colored people?"
"I suppose there is."
"What's it look like?"
"Can't rightly tell. Never been to any of the heavens. And I'm in no hurry neither."
"Y'all need to hush," little Jack says.
The O'Donnells, we don't bury our dead on public ground. We bury our dead on our own farms. The land is tilled over our graves.
Little Bit and I get to talking about ghosts. I say Jesus came back and spoke to his friends, the Apostles, after he died. Didn't that make him a ghost? Little Bit says it makes him a holy ghost.
"Do you hear them talking during prayers?" little Jack says to his ma, trying to get me and Little Bit in trouble.
The night of the fire, after I put Jess Still before her, Early Rise took her son and had him stretched out just like you see Mary done with Jesus Christ when they took him down off the cross. And they all sat down by his body on the ground and cried cried cried like Mary and them done. That's the way Little Bit and me left them that night. That's the way I'll always remember them.
The grave of Jess Still is not mine to mark. That is for his family. Even this makes me sad. Why must we all claim somebody, dead or alive? When a body dies, is it free or does it belong to God? When is a body free? How do we be free? Do we all need to be taught to be free?
Almost every family loses a baby here in these parts. But not like this. Babies aren't murdered. Nobody knows what to say. Are there any words for comfort?
After we put Jess Still in that sorry red ground, Mr. Frank, Miss Irene, and I head home in the wagon. Little Bit and Jack go home with Mr. Frank's pa and ma.
I think maybe they don't want me around Little Bit anymore. I think maybe they think she's seen too much on account of me. And I feel sorrowful bad about that, but I also want to say she's her own person. She is just now teaching herself to be free.
After we eat, none of us saying much, I go out near the barn to sit on Mr. Frank's praying log, but Mr. Frank is already there. He's reading his Bible, trying to find some story to keep his mood company.
Mr. Frank, he scoots over and doesn't say anything when I sit down. The log sinks a little with my weight.
"I'm sorry that you and Little Bit saw that little boy Jess die in that fire," he says. "I spoke with the sheriff. They're going to look for the men who did this."
When Mr. Frank came back from the fire that night, Little Bit and me, we told him all that we knew. Later, after Little Bit fell to sleep, I went outside, dug up the peach jar, unfolded the map, and stared and stared and stared at that man lighting the match that lit the cross that fell on the schoolhouse that killed Jess Still. Then I folded the map back up and put it in the jar and into the hole under the log.
"Do you think they'll ever find the men that did it?"
"Hard to say," Mr. Frank says, sighing. He looks tired and pale. "Sheriff says there have been a lot of bad nights. A lot of violence mostly aimed at the freed slaves."
"You're not joining up with them Ku Kluxers, are you, Mr. Frank?"
"Course not, Addy. And you don't need to worry about these things."
"If I don't, who will?"
"You did a fine thing, going in after Jess. A fine and right thing."
"It didn't do no good."
"I guess you know now it is just as easy to do good as it is to do bad," he says.
I think of all those hooded men laughing. I think of all those men walking away from that fire, not catching any heat, no blame.
"No, it ain't," I finally say. "Doing good is harder. Doing nothing is the easiest of all."
Mr. Frank stays quiet and then nods. "You're right, Addy."
I bite my bottom lip. Even if I was right every day of my life, no one never ever, no one ever, told me so. It is hard not to smile and hug him, but we both, we just sit there a while longer on that log under which lay our buried map.
It is a school day the next day and we rise early like we have every day and Mr. Frank and I set out, same as we ever do, except that today we turn off and head toward the other schoolhouse. The burned-down schoolhouse.
When we get there, there's nothing left but a pile of burned-up mess.
Mr. Frank and me, we are not surprised or even awestruck by the destruction. We take it in like sleepwalkers and poke around some.
I look for the place where Jess Still had lain still. There is nothing on the ground to say that something terrible happened here. No blood, no bones, no markers or tombstones. Just this bad smell of burning.
There is not much left to do. There is not much more we can do.
I find a wood shingle that is not so burned from the fire and make the surface smooth. I think of what to cut on it with my pocketknife. How does a body ever know a person? I think on Jess Still and what I hear about him. Then I carve out and write what I do know.
I don't need Mr. Frank to assign me a theme. I write what needs to be said. Mr. Frank stands by me and he reads:
JESS STILL RISE
MURDERED AND KILLED
HERE
NOVEMBER 17, 1875
I bury that marker deep into the ground.
Chapter 7
Monday is washing day. I build a fire and carry water from the spring. I set the wash pot on the fire and dump all the clothes in, stirring in Mr. Frank's overalls and long-legged underwear with the troubling stick. I get the washboard and a cake of soap ready when Miss Irene comes outside and says for me to go on with Mr. Frank.
I am so glad, for I would much rather build a schoolhouse than wash clothes.
***
Most all of us schoolchildren come out to rebuild the schoolhouse with Mr. Frank. Most every able-bodied black man, and even a few white men, come to help build. Rew Smith and his pappy stay away.
Even the sheriff comes and starts the day with a little speech about how he and his men are trying to track down who did this and how it's important to let the law take care of things. Then we all pray some.
We have to haul lumber from a distance because the Yankees took out the sawmills.
Mostly we children haul lumber and help with the food for the men who are building. Some of the men are cutting the pine logs, peeling the bark, shaping them with a broadax, cutting V-shaped notches in both ends to make them ready to fasten together with wooden pegs. Early Rise and Mr. Frank's ma are in charge of the noontime meal. They have a wash pot over an open fire and they are sorting through all the foods women, black and white, bring in.
When we're all working together this way, the work goes fast.
Layer by layer, the log walls are rolled up and into place, notched and fitted at the corners. Mr. Frank cuts two stout young trees down entire and sets them up at both end walls, their branches trimmed into a crotch to support the ridgepole.
Near about lunchtime, Please Cook's son, Deuteronomy, blows an old cow horn.
We eat corn pone, greens, and turkey and dumplings. There are roasting ears, beans, and applesauce. It is still a bad time for folks. Money and go
ods is hard to come by, but there is game in the woods and here we all are eating up, all because we come together.
By the end of the first day, the chimney built out of mud and rocks is up. Deuteronomy calls it a "chimley."
Mr. Frank and the other men agree that this schoolhouse will have a wooden floor, not an earthen floor, and I volunteer to help haul off split logs for planks.
For a roof the men put on the bark slabs, laid like shingles and held in place by a log for weight. I can see they build the roof good, pulling a crosscut saw and toting the slab boards up on a ladder.
The town cannot afford glass windowpanes, so Mrs. Davenport paints some paper with hogs' lard to let in the light. In the summer, they can always knock out the clay between the logs for ventilation and light, then fill it in again in winter to keep out the cold.
At one side of each window is a kind of ornament resembling a doorknob for the purpose of holding curtains in place. Mrs. Davenport says that's the way they have it in her house, and she thinks children should feel special when they come to school.
At the end of the week, when everything is up and ready, Mr. Frank, he thinks to paint one wall in the room black so students can write on it with chalk and use pieces of cotton as erasers.
Then finally, Mr. Frank, he paints the ceiling a beautiful white.
"That's the prettiest thing I ever saw," I say, looking at the ceiling.
"We knew exactly what we wanted this time," Mr. Frank says. "That's one thing to be said for reconstructing."
When we are all through we stand back to admire our work.
"Is it OK to take pride in such a thing?" I ask.
Mr. Frank smiles. "In the Bible it says that in the beginning, each time God made something new, he stood back and said, 'It is good.' Now, there was a man proud of his work."
"'Cept he wasn't a man."
"Sometimes it helps to think of him as a man. To think of him as the grandpappy of us all."
I think on this some. I think until my brain starts itching again. What I don't understand is, where was the Lord Grandpappy that night the schoolhouse burned? What was he doing?
When we all finally do go back to school, Mrs. Davenport, she volunteers to teach us for the time when Mr. Frank goes away to New Orleans for supplies. When me and Miss Irene wave goodbye to Mr. Frank, I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Pappy left and so did Momma. What makes me think Mr. Frank will come back?
A few mornings later, I go to the hen house like I always do, except this time I get this feeling something or someone is watching me. I hear a rustle, something slipping away. Is it a weasel? A possum? I hope not a fox.
In the coming light of the sun, I see a hand around a chicken's neck. I catch my breath and my eyes follow that hand up to an arm, and up further to the face of my pappy.
"Pappy?"
"Shhhh,"he says.
It is Pappy, who didn't go to Texas after all, or is he back?
I walk over to him, not sure what I can or can't do. I put my hands on his arms, like the beginning of a hug he won't let me finish.
"Heh," he says, smiling. "That Frank Russell. He's gone, idn't he." Pappy lets go of the chicken's neck and I let go of him, glad to see the chicken clucking away again, going back to pecking around the hay for insects or corn.
"Pappy? You the one been stealin' them eggs and the chicken too?"
"I'm no chicken thief," he says, smiling, like he thinks it's funny. I cannot tell if he's joking. Is this another one of Pappy's pranks? "And I know you will not tell on me being here, because I am your pappy."
And he leaves. He just up and leaves, just like that, and I can't help but think and wonder, Did this happen or was I dreaming?
At noon I see Pappy coming down the road, heading straight our way. All these years of not seeing him. All the years I thought I forgot his face, and now he is becoming an everyday sight for me.
He tips his hat to Miss Irene. He looks to have cleaned himself up since this morning.
Miss Irene, she goes back into the house and I wonder what all she's doing. Getting a gun? I hear the china shake in the china cabinet as she hurries across the floor.
She comes out with some bills, goes to the edge of the porch, and bends down to hand them to Pappy, like she's petting a dog. Pappy looks at the bills and laughs until he coughs a bad-sounding cough.
"I don't want money, ma'am. I'm no beggar man. I come for my girl. You can't buy a person. Not nowadays, anyhow. Besides, this here is no legal tender. This here is Confederate monies." But he pockets it just the same because he and I both know you can get maybe ten cents for a ten-dollar Confederate bill.
I am sorry for Miss Irene then. She knows no better. She is alone, without her husband, and here in front of her is my mischievous pappy, a man people say has killed. She is thinking he is here because he wants money or food, here because he wants something from her. But I know he is here because of me. I have brought danger to poor Miss Irene's doorstep.
"Word is you and your husband plan on startin' a general store. With such dreadful men around, it behooves me to tell your husband to protect himself when he's going after supplies. And you being all alone here. You need to protect yourself too."
"Is that a threat, Mr. O'Donnell?"
"No threat at all. Just a fact. Dangerous times we live in." He spits tobacco juice off to the side, takes his hat off, and looks around some. "I come for Addy, Miss Russell. I'll finish the raising now, if you please."
Even from where I stand, I catch an oily smell on account of the grease he put in his hair to keep it back. He stands in the yard I swept clean and smooth, and he talks and holds his hat over the center of his chest. Miss Irene listens. Her eyes study him long and hard. I know she is taking in every last detail of what I see. Here stands a man come to reclaim his property.
He taught me how to catch lizards, kill ducks, feather chickens, skin rabbits. He taught me how to hold a gun and a knife. He taught me how to tree a possum, then how to shake him down. He taught me how to be a boy even though I was a girl. He taught me what Momma wouldn't, and how could I not feel a need to pay him back? When he looks me in the eye, I read what that look means to say. I seen that look before when he went calling on folks, getting them to pay up on bets he liked to make. His eyes are saying, I come to collect.
I can see that Miss Irene don't know what to do. This here's my pappy and he has a right to take me. And I bet she's wishing he'd just go on and do just that. Since I've been here, seems like nothing but trouble has come their way, just the way Mr. Frank thought it would be. Their eggs and chickens get stolen, a schoolhouse burned down and a little boy killed, and me, another mouth to feed. I take matters in my own two hands then and step down off the Russell porch.
Pappy, he hugs me, and when his beard scratches my face, I think of how Momma would have his hide on account of his scratchiness and ill-kept ways. He smells as though he has just been in the river where he bathes and I think that was for me. He cleaned up for me and I'm not used to this sorrowful feeling I have for Pappy, and I know right away that he wouldn't like it one bit—his twelve-year-old girl feeling sorry for him. No, he wouldn't like it one bit, and he'd surely whip me for that.
Pappy. He is bad and mean and dangerous, but he is still my pappy.
I think maybe it will be a fine thing to go back home, whatever is left of it, and sit in a familiar room among familiar things. "Yer shoes is too big," he says, looking down at my feet. "I can fix those." I don't tell him Mr. Frank made me these shoes. I know he knows. Pappy, he knows everything.
I say my thank-yous and farewells to Miss Irene. Pappy won't let me take anything she wants to give. No blankets or biscuits or peaches. Nothing. We set to walking.
I look at the back of Pappy's slicked-back hair as he walks ahead of me to cross back into No-Bob. We don't say much because Pappy never did, not with me, anyway. But I can't help but wonder, Did he go to Texas or was he here all along?
He says, we
ll, sure, he went off to Texas and to other places too.
"What were you gone so long for?"
He doesn't answer me. He tells me stories of his travels instead. He says he saw a woman with no legs or hands who cut out paper silhouettes by holding a common pair of scissors in her mouth. He says he met a man who sold skunk oil to people with rheumatism and another who could tell you your future by feeling the bumps on your head.
"Yeah?" I say. "What'd he say about you?"
He stops walking, turns around, and lays my hands on the top of his greasy head. I feel a few bumps and even a bald spot. I have my hands in Pappy's hair and I have to laugh and joke. "Which bump is it that makes a fellow a chicken thief?"
He sniffs through his nose. That's the way Pappy laughs. "I was meant to be a statesman," he says serious and proud, acting like a statesman, whatever that is. "I have natural ability."
I can't help but smile, and we walk on. Pines grow closer together out here at the edge of No-Bob where the road gets narrow and buggies can't pass easily. Breathing in the smell of the pine trees, poplars, and cypresses, taking in such beauty, you feel goodness. You don't want to be mean.
"Sure is pretty," I say, looking around, changing our line of talk.
I want to think that Pappy could love or at least that he could learn how to love. Maybe Mr. Frank or Miss Irene could teach him or maybe I could. But some folks don't have the learning in them. Some folks won't let their hearts open up for learning. That's what I've learned. I've learned that some people can learn and love both, and some people can't, and Pappy might very well be one of the can'ts.
When I Crossed No-Bob Page 6
