Читать книгу Fri Nov 22 00:00:00 CST 2019 - Bryan Woolley - Страница 21

The Fourth Hour

THOMAS J.

“AIN’T GONNA BE NO DOGS IN HEAVEN. Ain’t gonna be no George Wallace in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no billy clubs in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no bullwhips in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no cotton fields in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no scrubbin’ in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no Kluxers in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no hate in heaven. Ain’t that right, reverend?”

“That’s right, sister. You said it right,” the Reverend Thomas J. Durant said. “You said it exactly right.”

Many of the old ones claimed more years than they had. Sister Emma claimed she was born in slavery. Thomas J. doubted it, but it was possible. The old ones often claimed that, and believed it. They ought to organize the Sons and Daughters of Slavery, Thomas J. thought, like the white women organized the Daughters of the Confederacy. They were proud of it. They liked to say they were born in slave cabins. Maybe this one was. She claimed to be a month past her hundredth birthday. It was possible. She looked like an Egyptian mummy there on the yellowing white sheet in the yellow light from the old lamp beside the bed. Her flannel nightgown, the nap worn off it in spots, was yellow, too, or seemed to be. She could be a hundred. She could be a daughter of slaves. Definitely a daughter of slaves. Maybe a slave herself. Her dark scalp shone through her thin white hair. She couldn’t weigh more than seventy-five pounds.

“You know what heaven’s gonna be like, reverend?”

“Sure, Sister Emma. Like the Zodiac.” Thomas J. smiled. She had gone with them the day they desegregated the restaurant on the sixth floor of Neiman-Marcus. She had said it looked like heaven.

The old woman laughed weakly. “Naw, reverend, not the Zodiac. Ain’t no fried chicken in the Zodiac. Ain’t no watermelon in the Zodiac. Heaven’s gonna be like Juneteenth every day. Lord, Lord, how them white women looked at us in that Zodiac. Naw, heaven ain’t gonna be that. Heaven’s gonna be Juneteenth, reverend.”

It was a tradition in Mount Zion Baptist Tabernacle that on the Sunday before Juneteenth, Sister Emma Rawlins would stand in the pulpit and tell about the Union general coming ashore in Galveston on June 19, 1865, and proclaiming the slaves in Texas were free. In the fourteen years that Thomas J. had been her pastor, her narrative had never varied. He was sure the proclamation hadn’t been as dramatic as Sister Emma imagined it, with hundreds of flags flying and trumpets sounding, and Sister Emma didn’t claim to remember the flags, since, she said, she wasn’t yet two years old at the time. But her mama and daddy told her about the flags, she said, and she did remember the sun shining so bright on the trumpets. She had celebrated every Juneteenth there had ever been, she said, and she remembered the sun on the trumpets.

“Come take me, Jesus. Lord, Lord, I’m ready. Ain’t gonna be no rent in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no light bills in heaven. Ain’t gonna be no cockroaches in heaven….” She paused, frowning. “Will there be white folks in heaven, reverend?”

“There’ll be some, Sister Emma. They aren’t all bad.”

“No, not all. President Lincoln will be there, won’t he?”

“Yes, he’ll be there.”

“Him and me was alive at the same time. Did you know that, reverend?”

“Yes, sister, I did.”

“Come take me, Jesus. Set me down by Abraham Lincoln. You know what heaven’s gonna be like, reverend?”

“Juneteenth every day.”

“That’s right. And State Fair. Them lights and that music. And cotton candy and walking by the lagoon and watching the fireworks. State Fair and Juneteenth at the same time, Lord, won’t it be fine?”

Sister Emma’s house was two blocks from Fair Park, where the fair was celebrated every October. She would move her rocker to the porch in the evenings when the air was cool and listen to the music of the nightly parades and the midway and the noise of the crowds at the Cotton Bowl that sounded like waves crashing on the beach at Galveston. On the last night of the fair, Thomas J. and Lucius Jackson would take her to the midway and find her a bench where she would sit and watch the swirling lights of the rides and smile at the screams of the youngsters riding them and admire the young couples strutting by with their corn on the cob and panda bears they had won. A month before this night that Thomas J. was sitting beside her bed, he and Lucius had taken her there in Lucius’s taxicab, and she’d called it the happiest night of her life because she had received a birthday card from President Kennedy that day.

“You’ll be there, reverend. And all the members of the Dallas County United Poll Tax Committee.”

“I hope so, sister.”

“Oh, you’ll come, all right. I’ll greet you at the pearly gates and make a little curtsy, just like at church. That won’t be for a long time, but time don’t mean nothing in heaven, does it?”

“No. You said it right, sister.”

A small gas heater burned brightly in the corner of the room and Thomas J. was sweating. He wanted to take off his coat, but it wouldn’t be dignified, so he pulled his handkerchief out of the breast pocket and mopped his brow. “Are you still cold, sister?” he asked.

“Yes. Would you pull the blanket over me?”

Thomas J. bent over the bed and pulled the old wool army blanket up to Sister Emma’s chin and tucked it around her. “Would you like some water?” he asked.

“Yes. That’s mighty kind of you, reverend.”

The floorboards creaked under his feet as he walked to the kitchen. He pulled the chain on the light socket hanging from the wire in the middle of the ceiling. The bare bulb, moving like a pendulum from the force of his pull, made shadows ebb and flow across the faded, water-stained wallpaper above the sink on one side of the room and the ancient gas range on the other. The porcelain back of the sink had two holes like eyes where faucets were intended to be, but Sister Emma carried her water from the faucet in the yard. The galvanized water bucket sat on a low bench beside the sink, and the dipper hung on a hook on the wall above it, but the bucket was empty. Thomas J. picked it up and walked back through the front room to the door. “I’m going to get you some water, sister,” he said.

He paused on the porch while his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then stepped onto the flat stone that served for a step, then to the ground. The rain was a fine mist, almost like fog, and made a halo around the streetlight down the block. He breathed deeply, craving the damp air after so long in the hot, dry room with the airless smell of sickness in it. The faucet was by the gate, and he stepped carefully toward it, still not sure of himself in the dark. He found the faucet and set the bucket under it and turned it on.

“Is that you, reverend?”

The voice startled him and he stood quickly erect. “Oh, hello, Lucius,” he said. “What are you doing, sneaking around here at this hour?” Lucius Jackson was a deacon in his church, and they had been friends a long time.

“Just checking on Sister Emma. I saw her light on. I brought her a TV.”

Thomas J. bent and turned off the faucet. “Where did you get it?”

Lucius hesitated. “Bought it from a guy. Just a while ago. I promised Sister Emma I’d take her downtown tomorrow to see the president, but I guess she can’t go.”

“No.”

“So I brought her a TV to watch him on. She doing OK?”

“No,” Thomas J. said. “She may not get to watch him on TV, either.”

“Well, I’ll bring it in.”

“You need help?”

“No. It’s a little one,” Lucius said.

“I was getting her a drink of water.” Thomas J. picked up the bucket.

“Uh-huh,” Lucius said. He disappeared, and Thomas J. heard him open a car door. He waited until Lucius reappeared at the gate, carrying the TV. “It’s a little one,” he said, “but I’ll set it close to her bed. It would have to be close, anyway, so she can reach it.”

They walked together into the house. “Lucius is here,” Thomas J. said. “He brought you a present.” He went to the kitchen and set the bucket on the bench and dipped water from it into a jelly glass sitting by the sink and took it to the front room. Lucius had set the TV on the chair in which Thomas J. had sat and was on his hands and knees, reaching under the bedside table to plug it in. “I think sister’s asleep,” he said.

Thomas J. sat down on the side of the bed, holding the glass. “Sister Emma? I brought your water.” The army blanket covered most of her face, and Thomas J. grasped its edge and turned it back. “Sister Emma?”

Lucius stood up and rubbed his palms on his pants legs.

“Happy Juneteenth, Lucius,” Thomas J. said.

“Huh?”

“She’s gone, Lucius. Call the funeral home.” He set the jelly glass on the little table and went to the corner and turned off the gas heater.

Lucius pulled off his cap and squeezed it in his big hands and stared at the still, small figure on the yellow sheet under the army blanket. Two huge tears welled into the corners of his eyes and coursed slowly down the valleys between his cheek and nose.

Thomas J. laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder and said, “Time don’t mean a thing in heaven, Lucius. Nothing at all.”