Constellations

by Tim Bryant

  "The poor bankers must have wished they had never opened their mouths when he was finished with them. He charged them with improper execution, misrepresentation, holding us under false pretenses and about half a dozen other things that I liked the sound of but didn't understand. Of course, the bankers started squealing like pigs, saying they were only following orders and that they were acting on behalf of the state of Texas, in any case, and certainly not themselves.

  "Mister Massey raised the paper and pointed.

  "Gentlemen, all it takes is one good eye and one good minute of reading to see that....

  "He stopped to read aloud....

  "Artillery Conray Patton is to be granted legal ownership of anything and everything of his choosing on the property, with the sole exception of the land itself, which shall be kept separate and turned over to the bank which holds the title.

  "The bankers were looking at the sheriff like— is he going to arrest us?— and the sheriff was looking at Lester like— are you telling me I need to arrest these guys?— and me and Harmon were just looking at the front door and wondered when we were ever going to be sent on our way.

  "There's still the matter of this poor little dead baby boy, said the one I'd threatened with the hack saw. Surely you're not going to let them just walk away without questioning them about that.

  "It seemed like, with a single pronouncement, all of Massey's work had come undone. Such a racket rose up in the room that I thought the whole place might dissolve into fisticuffs. It was like an old western where the good guys and the bad guys are arguing over what to do with the outlaw, only I couldn't be sure who was good and who was bad, and neither me nor Harmon was the outlaw. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that this was how people like me ended up swinging from tree limbs.

  "Just when I was about to lose all hope, Sheriff McBride stuck his head into the room and motioned for his boys to fall back. He then called on the bankers who looked like he had just ripped candy out of their hands. The room emptied out onto the front porch and then spilled out into the yard. Harmon and I tried to see what was going on through the big window, now shorn of curtains.

  "Lester Massey came over and joined us, as perplexed as anybody.

  "There's an old lady out there talking to the sheriff, he said. Either one of you have any idea who she is?

  "I could see the sheriff's hat in the crowd, but I couldn't see who he was talking to. Harmon pushed his guitar case up next to the window, stepped up on it, then arched up on the heels of his feet.

  "It's a white lady, he said.

  "Maybe it's his wife? Massey asked.

  "Harmon stretched a little more, then stepped down.

  "Art, I do believe it's your white lady friend from that big house with the picket fence."

  Somewhere along the way, amid all the bankers and lawyers and sheriff's deputies, Aunt You got all beside herself and quit playing the organ altogether. I think I was the only one who noticed. All other eyes were on Art. Therein, I thought, lay the problem.

  It wasn't that Aunt You took offense at Art's sordid tale. She just wasn't used to being upstaged on her own stage. Being conscious of the fact that she was blood kin, I knew I would have to live with the repercussions of the day. I worked my way over to her side of the room and then past her two friends, who weren't paying either me or Aunt You any mind at all.

  "Aunt You," I said. "I need to pull on the reins?"

  Meaning, do I need to get on the intercom and get this thing back under control.

  She was sitting there with her eyes closed, and I wasn't entirely sure she had heard me, but I didn't want to talk any louder for fear I could be heard over the mic. I reached out and touched her shoulder. Had she died and gone to Canaan right there in the midst of battle? I wouldn't have put it past her to do something so dramatic. I tentatively pushed her, not hard enough that she would topple off of her bench if she was dead, but not so soft that she wouldn't feel it if she wasn't.

  Her eyes snapped open and she glared at me.

  "Don't you dare stop 'til the good is all gone."

  Now, I'm pretty sure she was telling me I had best keep my hand off that intercom switch and let the man continue his tale, but it came across real loud and clear on the big RCA mic, almost like a shriek of ecstasy, and, of course, Art took it as instruction for himself.

  "Yes, Lord," said the old lady with the tambourine. I fell back against the wall and gave my own tambourine a shake or two. I looked at the clock on the wall. Our regularly scheduled program had gone out the window.

  "Somebody had obviously given Sheriff McBride what for, because when he come back into the room, it was like I was some kind of mustard gas bomb and it was his life's mission to clear everybody out before I went off.

  "You stay right where you are, Patton, he said. Everybody else, outta here.

  "He even tried to throw Harmon out, but I said there wasn't any reason for it. To tell you the truth, I was afraid for what he was gonna try to do to me, and I wanted Harmon there for at least a witness if not for protection. Know what I'm saying?

  "Well, soon enough, everybody's out on the front yard. Some of them are getting out of Dodge. Getting out while the getting's good, as Momma Jodora used to say. And I'm standing there trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I just want to get on my boat and leave too. Pretty soon it's just me and the sheriff and Harmon standing there in that room, and it's so not a whole lot bigger than this studio right here, but it's been getting bigger by the minute. Like, every time somebody left the room, it got a little bigger. I thought about making a run for it, but that door looked like it was far off as the moon.

  "All I wanna do is get on my boat and get out of here, I said. I was looking at Harmon, but we both knew who I was talking to. Back in that day, when the sheriff come around, you always made sure to let him know you was on your way out of his jurisdiction just as fast as your feet could take you. It never hurt, and sometimes it helped matters a great deal.

  "Sheriff said, that can be arranged, but first, there's someone wants to have a word with you. You know a lady named Collette Edwards?

  "I said no, sir, I didn't know of anyone by that name.

  "He said, well, she sure seems to think she knows you.

  "And then one of them deputies opened the front door, stepped to the side real gentlemanly, and in come Missus Collette Edwards, the old white lady who was always waving to me from the porch. I don't know if I had ever heard her name spoken. If I had, it hadn't stayed in my mind. But there she was, and up closer, she looked considerably older. She looked at me and probably thought something similar, but she smiled real big and come right up like we was old friends.

  "Don't you look like Victor around the eyes, she said.

  "I reached out and shook her hand. It wasn't the most promising introduction I'd ever heard, but, needless to say, I was intrigued.

  "She gave me her name and I said mine, although it was plain that she already knew it.

  "Mister Patton, she said, my family lawyer is somebody with whom I believe you are familiar. A Mister Lester Massey?

  "I said yes, ma'am, I was very indebted to Mister Massey.

  "Miss Edwards said, I have been wanting to have a word or two with you for quite some time now, and Mister Massey assured me that this might be my last fair chance to do so. He also told me what happened with the sheriff, so I knew it was high time for me to take a trip back out here. May we sit down for a few minutes?

  "I said I had nothing against the idea, but that we hadn't left much furniture in the house. That it was all out on my boat.

  "The Camargo? she said.

  "Now I was sure enough catching an interest.

  "May we go to the Camargo to talk? she said, and I said by all means."

  "I remember your daddy, Victor, but it was your momma and your oldest brother Wash that I knew best, she said. You wouldn't remember me. There wasn't anything worth remembering to a little boy. Now your brother Wash was a good
bit older than you. A good bit. Maybe eight years.

  "But I was there when both of you were born. There was a colored nurse named Viola. I loved her to death. She spelled her name like the musical instrument— the viola— but she pronounced it Viola, like eye.

  "I said I didn't have any memory of Viola, but it seemed I could recall Momma Jodora talking about her. We were sitting on the bow of the boat in two chairs from George's kitchen, and I may have been as happy as I had ever been. A fine boat she was, and I was happy to have Missus Edwards as my first guest onboard.

  "The sun was sparkling on the water, and the breeze was blowing just enough to send ripples of light that broke against the side of the boat and disappeared. You could look straight down to the bottom, and you might even see a catfish or a group of guppies if you could hold your gaze long enough.

  "Up on the shore, the sheriff's Model T was about thirty yards up the road and pulled to the side, and there was at least a dozen or so people just standing around and talking. Some of them were probably waiting to see if what happened after the old white lady left. Some might have wanted nothing more than to see the Camargo off on her voyage. All of them were trying to act like it was just something they always did on a nice morning in Pattonia.

  "I worked for Lucy Conray, Missus Edwards said, almost twenty years, on and off. My brother Robert worked in their cotton pavilion, if you remember that. And it was through him I learned of Lucy Conray wanting help at the Big House. I know you must remember that Big House.

  "I said I did, but I didn't remember going in it except maybe one or two times.

  "Well, she said, I had worked afternoons in the hospital when we lived in Nacogdoches, doing little odd jobs and helping the nurses when they were shorthanded. But we were living on the other side of Dorr Creek by this time. Nacogdoches was too far. I was happy to find work with Lucy Conray, and she paid me. Almost the same as I'd been getting in town.

  "You remember my brother Wash? I said. I was hoping she might be able to back up the stories I had heard. Maybe she would even add to them.

  "Mister Patton, she said, I knew your brother very well. He was almost my undoing, or maybe I should say, I was almost his. That's a big part of what I want to tell you about.

  "It seems that in the year before he was sold off into Louisiana, Wash and Collette had taken an attraction to each other.

  "That was just something you didn't do, she said. We were caught talking out back of the Big House one afternoon, and I thought it was the end of my working there. Believe it or not, Miss Lucy gave me a talking to and let me go. I was fifteen years old. Wash must have been about the same, maybe a year younger.

  "I told her I didn't have any recollection of that.

  "No, you wouldn't, she said. It was kept hush hush. Later, it was your father Victor who found the two of us down behind the Quarters. He said it wasn't no place for a white girl to be and hauled me off by the ear. Two weeks later, Wash was gone for good.

  "Collette Edwards looked sad. I tried to imagine her as a young girl, but she looked too sad for that.

  "You don't owe me no apology for that, I said. It was all I could come up with.

  "We were young and foolish, and we spent our days like the wind, Mister Patton, she said, but I want you to know that I thought the world of your brother, and I missed him every day for many a year.

  "I appreciated her words, but I wasn't sure what to do with them. They seemed like something for somebody else. I thanked her anyway and said I hoped she felt better. I had no hard feelings toward her.

  "I told her it seemed like maybe we had shared some important things without me even knowing it, but that I didn't miss the days on the Conray farm one iota. Maybe that was the biggest difference between us.

  "You may be right, she said. It's a funny thing. Most of my memories of that place don't bring me anything but pain and sadness, and yet I have to say, I do miss those days. I had a husband for thirty-five years, and he was a good man, but if I could relive any of my days, I would go back to those days at the Big House.

  "What could I say to that? Wasn't anything to be said.

  "You remember Jed and that model boat of Mister Conray's?

  "She said she did— right down to me getting a whooping for it— and, for some damn reason, that made me happy.

  "You remember old Blue Dick? I said.

  "Can you remember that? she said back. You remember your other brother?"

  "My other brother, I said. You mean Washington.

  "She suddenly seemed to look older, as if some part of her life, a decent part of whatever was left of it, had just been sucked out of her.

  "You had another brother who died when you were a baby. His name was Artillery.

  "I thought surely she had things confused in her mind. She was old. Really old.

  "Artillery, I said.

  "That's right. They called him Art like you. She would say it's Artillery for his destructive power and Art for his creative power. You didn't even have a name. They didn't name negro babies back then like they do now. Sometimes a negro baby wouldn't have a name until he was walking and talking. Old enough to say it and recognize it when it was said.

  "I didn't know how to proceed with my part of the conversation. I was almost positive that she had gotten her memories crossed up. Hell, for all I knew, maybe she had gone soft headed. I wanted to end the conversation and be on my way. But then, I didn't.

  "What happened to Art?" I said. I said it real matter-of-factly, like I was asking about the weather report for the rest of the day. It seemed so disconnected from me, it was about the same.

  "Miss Edwards said, Neither one of your parents ever got over that, I don't guess. They both took it in their own individual ways. Your momma, God bless her, tried to go on like nothing had happened. She said she had a vision— a dream, I suppose— and God had told her that you would be everything that that little boy was supposed to be. That's why she named you Art.

  "But she named me Artillery, I said.

  "No, she said. That's who you became. That's not who you were born to be.

  "I remember noticing at this point that Harmon was standing five feet away from us. No longer making any attempt at looking occupied. Sheriff McBride was standing next to an oak tree just across the road. I wondered how much of this story he had heard. Did he believe it?

  "You didn't answer my question, I said.

  Her eyes looked dazed.

  "What happened to my brother?

  She glanced at Harmon and then back at me. Then at the Sheriff under the oak tree.

  "Art got kicked by Blue Dick, she said.

  Now I knew she was crazy.

  "It was me got kicked by Blue Dick

  "She stood up and grabbed at her purse.

  "You were there, she said, true. He had you up on that mule, riding you around. If he had been on the mule with you, it never would have got him.

  "I sat with your brother for two nights. We did everything we knew how to do. His head swelled up. He lost his sight. We prayed for God to heal him, and as things went on, we started to pray that he would take him. Your daddy wouldn't let Jodora see him. Your daddy came close to taking a pillow and ending it all a time or two. The way it all ended, I've often wondered if it would have been better.

  "She held her hand out, and I shook it. There wasn't any reason for me not to. I don't remember thanking her. I might have or maybe not. As she stood on the starboard side of the Camargo, waiting for McBride to come over and help her back up the bank to safety, she spoke again.

  "I still remember taking his little body down to William Delafield. Of course, I knew William and his wife too. Their son George. Good people, especially your friend George. A good man.

  "She looked around the boat.

  "He would be happy to see you get out of here. He would be even happier to know you were doing it on the Camargo.

  "I asked her if she knew anything about the boat.

  "Sometime before the w
ar between the states, she said, a customer from somewhere down river had run up a pretty steep bill at the seed store and tried to pay it off by giving him two slaves, an old man and his wife. They were old, he said, but she could sew anything from coveralls to ball gowns, and he was as good at shoeing horses as anyone this side of the Red River.

  "William told the man he didn't trade in people. Well, this fellow said, this is all I have of value that I can give you, so you either take them to settle my debt or be prepared to take the loss.

  "William was prepared to take the loss, but that fellow's situation went from bad to worse, and pretty soon, he was reduced to selling off everything he had. William wound up buying the Camargo from them for a small price and calling it even. He took that old colored couple too, and paid them a wage for several years to help out around the store.

  "I knew this story to be true, because I had heard it from George's mouth. The two old slaves that his father had given a job. I could even name them. Avery and Rachel Goodman. How can you forget a name like Avery Goodman. A very good man. But I didn't mention it. She left with Sheriff McBride, who told me I would be wise to put as much distance between myself and Nacogdoches County as I could.

  "Not a single word about any of it was spoken between Harmon and me that day, and not for a number of days after. I did do some thinking on it though. When it all came down to it, I knew Collette Edwards was right. She wouldn't have waved at me from her front porch like she had. She wouldn't have waited all that time just to pass on a lie. What's more, I knew that that was my brother in that box back in George Delafield's bedroom. Sure as you're born, it was him."