Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 24
ОглавлениеBy April of 1927, most folk in Mississippi couldn’t think of anything but rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flooding.
Not a drop of rain had fallen between May and July of 1926, but on the first day of August the skies opened up and remained that way for a very long time.
Bullet rain. Bucket rain. Rain as soft as rose petals. Mist.
You’d think that so much water would have washed the stench of sin right out of the air, but it didn’t. The water infused it, transforming it into an invisible vapor that hung in the air like fog.
Sin was what was on August’s mind when he shrugged on his gray slicker and shoved his Bible into one of the oversized pockets. Retrieving an umbrella from the stand in the small vestibule, he opened the door and stepped out into the downpour.
It was Good Friday and he was headed to the church a few hours early to go over his sermon. It gave him no pleasure to be thinking about sin on one of the most blessed days of the Christian calendar, but try as he might, he could not shake the troubling thoughts, nor could he decide if the sin had ushered in the rain or the rain had made way for the sin. Whatever the case, both the sin and the rain were there—growing mightier with each gray, wet day.
Weeks earlier, one parishioner after the next had approached him with: “Reverend, could I have a word, please?”
August listened quietly and intently as the men confessed to gambling, drinking, and fornicating. The women’s offenses were light in nature compared to their male counterparts. Their transgressions involved gossiping and coveting. August prescribed scripture and prayer and sent them on their way.
But he soon realized that sin hadn’t infected just his community; it was wreaking havoc all across the state. Every new day brought another horrendous report of evildoing:
William N. Coffey, aged 48, confessed he’d murdered his bigamous bride, Hattie Hale Coffey, clubbing her to death with a baseball bat and then tossing her into the Mississippi River.
In the town of Alligator, plantation owner V.H. McCraney shot and killed plantation owner C.G. Callicott and then put the pistol to his head and blew his brains all over the face of the wide-eyed witness, Richard Moore.
MISSISSIPPI LEADS IN NEGRO LYNCHINGS …
Yes, sin was everywhere. It had even breached the sanctity of his own home.
At the church, August removed the skeleton key from his pocket, shoved it into the lock, and turned. Once inside, he loaded the pot-bellied stove with wood and paper and tossed in a lit match. As he stood watching the flames swell and flicker, his mind wandered to his wife and the bite mark on her thigh.
He’d noticed it weeks earlier as she lay sleeping. Sometime during the night, her restless tossing and turning had caused her gown to roll up and around her waist. The warm and humid day had ushered in an equally uncomfortable evening, so the blanket was left folded at the foot of the bed and husband and wife slept uncovered.
The morning August realized that sin had taken up residence in his home was a morning similar to the thousand others that preceded it. August had risen early, swung his legs over the side of the bed, stretched his arms high above his head, and yawned.
As always, he took a moment to admire his beautiful sleeping wife, and that’s when he spotted the bite, which he first took as a bruise.
On closer inspection, August could plainly see the teeth marks in her flesh, and his heart dropped out of his chest. Some man, some heathen, had placed his mouth so close to
— August stopped the thought barreling down on him.
How could she? Why would she?
Doll had not allowed him to make love to her in that way for months. She had even prohibited the normal coupling that occurred between man and wife. After a while, August had been forced to pleasure himself in the solitary darkness of the outhouse.
Now it was all clear to him: she had taken a lover.
Adulteress!
The word alone was kindle for fury.
No one would have faulted August if he had snatched Doll up by the throat and choked the breath out of her.
But not August. He did what he always did when it came to Doll’s misgivings—he turned her sin onto himself and absorbed like a sponge. He convinced himself that he had allowed his church and his flock to take precedence over his wife. The result of which were feelings of neglect within Doll. She in turn had sought attention elsewhere, and had stumbled into the arms of a heathen who plied her with sweet lies all in the name of pilfering her pyramid.
He had only himself to blame.
August exited the bedroom on legs made of jelly. He thought he might vomit and rushed to the outhouse. Standing in the darkness, he waited patiently for the surge, but it did not come. What did emerge were tears accompanied by a howl so loud and sorrowful that it woke Hemmingway from her slumber.
The door of the church opened and closed. August turned around to find one of his parishioners stepping in.
“Morning, Sister Betty.”
“Morning, Reverend.” Sister Betty’s response was cheerful. “Happy Good Friday to you!”
August smiled. “And the same to you.”
Sister Betty removed her coat and gave it two good shakes, sending droplets of water through the air. “I know you ain’t s’pose to question God, but I gotta ask why in the world he sending down all this rain!” She chuckled as she moved to August’s side and floated her hands over the stove. “Ooh, nice and toasty,” she moaned.
August excused himself. He went to the small windowless room located at the back of the church. Once inside, he lit a candle, sat down at his desk, opened the drawer, and removed six pages of notes.
He’d been working on the sermon for nearly two weeks, but now, as he scanned the paragraphs, none of it read familiar. It was as if some other man had written the words. A man consumed with grief and riddled with self-pity.
You ask, Did he question Doll about the love-bite? No. Not one word was uttered. August buried it, alongside his pride.
Hurt is a growing thing. August’s hurt took root and sprouted vines that coiled around his heart and stomach. Chest pains and a severely decreased appetite left him shaky and thin.
Hemmingway had asked, “Daddy, you feeling okay?”
August had nodded, forced a smile, and nodded again.
Doll didn’t seem to notice that her husband was disintegrating right before her very eyes. If she did, well, Esther didn’t allow her to give a good goddamn. And by this point in the story you should be well aware that Esther’s devotion to anyone other than herself was as shallow as a saucer.
August read and reread the paragraphs; drew thick lines through sentences and scribbled notes in the margins, all the while aware of the sound of the rain beating down on the roof as loud and resolute as an army of men marching off to war.
On Candle Street, Cole was preparing to send his wife off to attend the wedding of a family member in New Orleans. Melinda was upset that Cole could not join her.
“You won’t be alone,” Cole reminded her. “Caress will be with you.”
“But I don’t know if I’m up for such a long trip.”
Cole’s jaw clenched in frustration. “Now, now, Lindy, you know the doctor gave you a clean bill of health.”
Melinda glanced out the window. “But the rain …”
“It’ll be nice and dry on the train.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I have to be here to receive the shipment; after that, I’m on the next train to New Orleans.”
Outside, Caress was seated alongside the driver on the bench of the carriage. Her arm was going numb from holding the wide black umbrella over her head.
Cole walked Melinda to the carriage, opened the door, and helped her inside. He planted a soft kiss on her cheek.
“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be there before you know it.”
Cole pushed the door closed and signaled to the driver, who snapped the reigns. The horses began to gallop.
It wasn’t until Mingo was spotted streaking up the middle of the road with his shoulders hunched up against the downpour that people realized he hadn’t been seen for days.
He was running so hard, he almost ran smack into the pair of horses that pulled the carriage carrying Melinda and Caress.
“Fool, watch where you’re going!” the driver yelled.
Mingo darted toward the bridge and would have collided with Doll if she had not stepped quickly out of his path. Seeing her, Mingo came to a screeching halt. “Mrs. Reverend, ma’am!”
Doll, whose head was tied in a yellow scarf that did nothing to protect her hair from the rain, whirled around and almost dropped the stack of records she had tucked beneath her arm. She looked at Mingo, but no recognition registered in her eyes. She offered him a polite smile and continued on her way.
Mingo watched her dodge raindrops down Candle Street before disappearing around the side of one of the houses.
He scratched his chin in bewilderment, then tugged the collar of his shirt around his neck and took shelter beneath a nearby tree. He eased himself down onto his hunches and fixed his gaze on the slate sky. He remained that way until Sam T. happened upon him.
“Hey, what you doing?”
“Huh?” Mingo blinked water from his eyes until Sam T. came into focus.
Sam T. was lean and freckled, with a mass of reddishbrown hair that he wore parted down the middle.
“You okay, Mingo?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh.”
“Man, you gonna catch your death out here in the rain without a coat. Where’s your coat?”
Mingo glanced down at his shirt and slacks. He seemed surprised to find that they were soaked through to the skin.
Sam T. chuckled. “You been drinking?”
“Nah.”
“You sure? Why you out here in the rain?”
Mingo sniffed and slowly brought himself erect. He made a face and began stomping his feet. “I got needles all up and down my legs.”
“Watch it!” Sam T. cried as he jumped away from the puddled water that Mingo splashed. He stepped under the tree and gave Mingo a long, hard look. “Ain’t seen you for a few days. Where you been?”
Mingo’s face went dark. “Greenville,” he said with a wince.
“What were you doing in Greenville?”
“I got people there,” Mingo muttered, and then brightening a bit he said, “Hey, listen, man, you got any on you?”
Sam T. understood the any to mean whiskey. “Nah, sorry.”
“Oh,” Mingo said, and the light leaked from his face.
“So, uhm, did you leave Greenville in a hurry or something?”
Mingo’s eyes narrowed. “Why, what you hear?” he barked menacingly.
Sam T. raised a protective arm. “I ain’t heard nothing. It’s just that it’s raining and you ain’t got no jacket, no slicker, no nothing on your back but that wet shirt. I just figured you left in a hurry, that’s all.”
Mingo smirked, and then instinctively reached for the cigarette behind his ear. When he found that it wasn’t there, he patted down his shirt and dug into the pockets of his pants.
Still nothing.
Mingo gave Sam T. a hopeful look. “You got any smokes?”
Sam T. pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook one free. It took three tries to get it lit.
Mingo took a few puffs and then pressed the tip against the bark of the tree, extinguishing it. He tucked the remainder behind his ear.
Sam T.’s eyes swung between Mingo and the road, which was beginning to look more and more like a stream.
“Me and my cousin Charlie was headed o’er to his mama’s house. We weren’t worrying nobody. The law just swooped down on us—guns drawn!” Mingo announced without warning.
Sam T. leaned in. “What now?”
Mingo’s right eyelid began to twitch. “The law come up behind us and stuck their guns in our backs. One man say, Can’t you see its raining, boys? Well, of course we could see that, wasn’t no getting around seeing it. We weren’t really understanding what point the man was trying to make. So me and Charlie said, Yes suh, we sees that. Turn around, the man say. And we do like he say. And then the next man raised his pistol high and brought the nozzle to rest square between my eyes, and he say: Then why ain’t you boys down by the river working? So then I says, Why would we be down by the river? And that’s when the first man hauled off and clobbered me upside my head with the butt of his gun.”
Mingo turned his head slightly to the left and pointed to the egg-sized knot above his temple.
Sam T. examined it and grimaced.
“When he hit me, I went down, I went down hard, and sent up a might amount of mud in the process. So the one that hit me say, First you sass me and now you dirty up my nice clean slicker? Get up, nigger!”
Mingo’s hands were shaking real hard when he snatched the butt from behind his ear and slipped it back between his quivering lips.
Sam T.’s eyes bulged. “They lock you and Charlie up?”
Mingo blew a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “Nah, jail would have been a blessing. They walked us down to the river.”
Sam T. frowned. “The river? For what?”
“They got most of the colored men in Greenville down at the river.”
“What they got them doing down there?”
“Packing, hauling, and stacking sandbags.”
Sam T. scratched his chin. “What they paying?”
Mingo shot him an incredulous look. “Paying? Nigger, ain’t you heard me say the law plucked us right off the street and took us down to the river? The pay is you get to keep your goddamn life!”
Mingo sucked on the cigarette until the filter began to smoke; only then did he flick the butt out into the rain.
“Those niggers who refused to do the work were shot and thrown in the river.”
Sam T. shuddered.
Mingo spat a glob of phelgm into the mud. “They emptied out the jails too.”
“My God,” Sam T. murmured.
“It’s like a war zone up there. Men patroling both sides of the river with shotguns.”
“Why is that?”
“Don’t you know nothing, Sam T.?”
Sam T. shamefully shrugged his shoulders.
“If someone blow the levee closest to the north shore, the properties on the south shore might get spared. Someone blow the levee on the south shore, the property on the north shore might get spared.”
“Sure nuff?”
Mingo nodded his head. “While I was there a story come down the line said that some old boys from the north shore were caught with a box of dynamite on the wrong the side of the river.” He looked down at his battered shoes. “I believe they fish food now.”
The two men were quiet as they watched an old woman slosh slowly up the road.
“How long they had you?”
“Two days and two nights,” Mingo said in a trembling voice.
Thunder rolled across the sky and the rain began to fall in torrents. Sam T. and Mingo pressed their backs against the bark of the tree.
Mingo yelled over the din, “I finally got away—”
“Got away? They didn’t just let you go?”
“I had to run.”
“You run all the way from Greenville?”
“I believe so,” Mingo said as he reached up and felt behind his ear. Without asking, Sam T. offered him another cigarette.
“What happened to Charlie?”
Mingo looked off into the distance. “I don’t know.”
“You left him?”
“We weren’t together. They drop me at one end of the river, so I assumed they took him to the other end.”
Sam T. swiped rainwater from his face. When he looked at Mingo again, the man’s entire body was shaking. Sam. T. gripped his shoulder.
“Gotta get you outta of this weather,” Sam T. urged. “I’m headed over to the church. You wanna come? Church got plenty of room and it’s warm and dry inside.”
“Is today Sunday?”
“Nah, it’s Friday. Good Friday.”
“What so good about it?” Mingo cackled bitterly.
“God, that’s what’s good about it,” Sam T. retorted joyfully.
“Nah, Sam T., I don’t think I’d be welcome.”
Sam T. chuckled. “Sure you would. Everyone is welcomed in the house of the Lord.”
On that rain-drenched Good Friday, Hemmingway witnessed two very interesting things as she stood staring out of her bedroom window. The first was her mother hurrying across the bridge. Doll had claimed she was going to the church to assist August with any last-minute details before service.
After Hemmingway heard the front door slam, she crossed the floor to the window, parted the curtains, and watched her mother walk in the opposite direction of the church. The fact that Doll had told a lie did not strike Hemmingway as odd, but seeing her skipping like a child through the downpour wearing a yellow scarf and carrying a stack of records was strange, even for Doll.
Normally, Hemmingway could care less about Doll’s comings and goings, but she’d sensed her father’s melancholy and was deeply concerned about his physical decline, which she suspected had everything to do with the love-bite on her mother’s thigh.
Oh yes, Hemmingway saw it too.
The morning August’s howling had startled Hemmingway out of her sleep, she lay in bed listening for a good long time. Assuming the noise was coming from a wounded animal, she closed her eyes and pulled the pillow over her face in an effort to block it out. But the pillow did little to muffle the persistent noise. Unable to take much more, Hemmingway climbed from her bed and padded down the hall to her parents’ room with the intention of waking her father. She thought the two of them could seek out the animal and either attend to its wound or put it out of its misery.
The bedroom door was ajar and without knocking, Hemmingway pushed it back on its hinges. The room was filled with heather-colored, early-morning light. She saw that August was not in the bed and that Doll was still fast asleep. She walked over to the bed and was stopped short by the pink and purple bruise that seemed to glow against her mother’s flesh.
Hemmingway could not mistake the mark for anything else—Paris had bitten her enough times to make her an expert.
Disgust snaked through her body.
Certainly, her father hadn’t pressed his mouth so close to that place that leaked blood every month. Not the good Reverend August Hilson!
Hemmingway backed out of the room, returned to her bed, and closed her eyes. There, the longstanding repulsion she’d held for her mother turned hard with hate.
Outside, the howling finally came to an end. The outhouse door banged open and then closed and Hemming-way now understood that her father was the wounded animal.
The second interesting thing Hemmingway witnessed from her bedroom window was Mingo, running so fast and so hard she thought he would take flight. The near head-on collision with the horse and then Doll slowed him down to a stop. What Mingo called out to Doll, and Doll’s reply, would remain a mystery to Hemmingway. But whatever her mother had said, or not said, seemed to leave Mingo confused.
“You coming or what?”
Hemmingway turned around to find Paris standing in the doorway, raking a comb through his wooly hair.
“You go on ahead, I’ll be there soon.”
“You better not be late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Hemmingway hummed, then asked, “Where’s Dolly?”
Paris’s face went blank.
“What do you mean? Ain’t she in her room?”
Before she could respond, Paris was ambling away calling, “Dolly?” He stepped into the empty bedroom, pushed his fists into his sides, and bellowed, “Dolly!”
“She ain’t here!” Hemmingway screamed from her room.
Paris reappeared with a perplexed look on his face.
“She ain’t there,” he said.
Hemmingway rolled her eyes. “I just said that, fool.”
“Where she at?”
Hemmingway shrugged her shoulders.
Paris smirked. “Probably went to the church early,” he said confidently.
“Yeah, that’s probably where she went,” Hemmingway replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
