Faith's Reckoning, page 8
She awoke to the force of gravity pulling her forward in her seat as the great iron horse pitched to a stop then slowly resumed its forward motion. It was dark outside, the moon having yet to rise, but Delsey could tell from the smell of saltwater that the train had arrived in Gulfport, the tracks winding closer to the harbor and to the station, which anchored a node of converging commerce. As they approached the lights of the boarding platform, the putrid smell of crab and shrimp greeted her from the cleaning stalls of the adjacent wharf. Lanterns illuminated a boardwalk that led to the painted hulls and weathered cabins of fishing boats.
Delsey stood up and braced herself as the train came to a final halt. Her legs needed stretching since it would be a bit of time before the Crescent Limited arrived and the cars were transferred to that train. She took her purse with her as she waited her turn to step into the aisle. A portly, ruddy-faced conductor approached from the platform as she and the other passengers exited the car. He handed them special transfer tickets as arranged and told them he would lock the car and secure their luggage until the train departed again at midnight.
She found the restroom designated for Colored women and washed her hands and face over the porcelain washbasin next to the toilet. Outside, she drank from a water fountain until her thirst was slaked, then headed to the boardwalk and the pungent pulse of moist air rolling in on the surf. A small shack that offered fresh fried fish and potatoes was still open. She splurged and bought a Coke for five cents plus the two-cent deposit and kept walking until she reached a pier at the far end of the network of walkways. A lone tugboat, dark and uninhabited, was tethered nearby. She sat beneath a lantern swinging slightly in the breeze and unpacked one of her sandwiches. She uncapped the Coke with a bottle opener nailed to the side of the pier and took a long drink, enjoying the refreshing bite of bubbles. She leaned back against the lamppost and gazed at the gibbous moon that was just rising. The remnants of her dream resurfaced, and she let herself tarry awhile with the memory of that face and the feeling in her body. She wanted to enjoy the company of her conjured lover for a bit longer before he disappeared into the subterranean vault of vanished dreams. She ate her sandwich slowly, tasting each bite. An hour or more elapsed and as the night deepened, she found herself walking the boardwalk again, the waves of high tide lapping below. The lights of a train approaching from the west illuminated the tracks ahead. She began to feel the excitement of seeing her family again, Toby and Jesse and her other siblings. A year was a long time to be without them.
A shrill whistle summoned her to the Crescent Limited, arriving from New Orleans. She watched the train pull into the station, light pouring from the windows, the frames of cozy families in sleeping berths flickering by like a movie reel slowing to a stop. The two extra passenger cars from Hattiesburg were soon attached to the back of the train behind the library car, and she stood there mesmerized peering into its opulent chamber. She could see the bookshelves faced with leaded glass doors. She reached her hand up as if she were inside the car and about to retrieve a book from the shelf.
“Best car on the train,” said the rich, deep voice next to her. “It’s the one place where I remember who I am.”
She felt him before she saw him. She turned to face him. Although they had never met, he seemed familiar. Beneath the round black box of his cap, its polished silver plate proclaiming him a Pullman porter, she caught the outline of his jaw, so gracefully defined. At six feet and a few inches, he had the long sinewy look of the naturally muscled, leaned by work and spare rations. The light from the car reflected the soft brown of his eyes.
“And who would that person be…. Mr. Walker?” she added after reading his name badge. Her own boldness surprised her.
“Well it certainly isn’t some fellow called George, who shines the shoes of the overindulged.” He removed his cap and rubbed his head, teasing loose the tight-coiled curls of his sweat-laced hair. He held the cap under his left arm and began to unbutton the blue woolen jacket of his uniform. “That fellow is just coming off duty.”
“I’m Delsey Clemons and pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Sorry. Plessy, Plessy Walker.” He replied, reaching out his hand and taking her in for the first time.
She was no timid slip of a woman. She came to within five inches of his height, her broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. Her muscled forearms betrayed a childhood as a field hand. Yet, there was something in the delicacy of her cheekbones and the elegance with which she offered her hand in return that suggested a keen intelligence. Her hazel eyes were steady, welcoming.
Gazing at her and with a light bow of his head, he added, “And I assure you, the pleasure is entirely mine.”
They paused in the awkward tension of mutual attraction.
“You know, for a minute there, I felt as though I was actually inside that library car,” Delsey continued. “I imagined myself standing there as the person I am meant to be. The one who would teach.”
A second whistle blew announcing the final call to board. The ruddy-faced conductor waddled toward them at the end of the platform, collecting transfer tickets from the passengers from Hattiesburg. The white car boarded first. As the conductor began boarding Delsey’s car, Plessy fell in line behind her.
“Coming off duty, Walker?”
“Yes, Mr. George,” Plessy replied.
Delsey frowned. She thought the name George was reserved for porters named after George Pullman in the tradition of slaves named for their owners. Plessy noticed her expression.
“It’s his real name,” Plessy whispered into her ear, smiling, and pointing to the name badge that read George M. Bartlett, Conductor.
“How far are you headed then?” Bartlett continued.
To D.C.,” Plessy returned. “Thanksgiving with my sister and her kids. And her husband, too, if he is not on call.”
They walked down the aisle, all the way to the back of the car. Plessy reached up, opened a concealed compartment above the last bench, and pulled down two blankets and a worn pillow.
“You’ll need some sleep, I imagine,” he said, his words warming her even before he wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “Where are you going, may I ask?”
“To Montgomery. My father just bought his own farm, only twenty acres, but a dream come true. It’s going to be a real Thanksgiving this year.” Delsey was wide-awake.
“You know, I’m not at all sleepy,” she said, settling in next to Plessy as the train crawled out of Gulfport. “We could talk for a while.”
“Or all night,” he smiled softly.
“So, you never answered my question back there,” Delsey ventured.
“What question was that?”
“When you are in the library car, who is it that you remember? Who is that man?”
“Well, Miss Delsey Clemons, he is a lawyer. He is a lawyer who knows that the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution were just the beginning. He’s a man who knows that you and I deserve to manifest our own destinies and that it will require writing the Negro into every weave of the legal fabric of this country.” He sat upright, took a deep breath then leaned back a little. He reached his right arm around Delsey and tucked the blanket around her, pulling her ever so slightly closer to him. “He’s a man with big dreams.”
“Go on,” Delsey encouraged him. “I told you I am not the least bit sleepy. And I believe in dreams.” She nestled closer as the image of the yellow farmhouse danced forth from her memory, mesmerizing her like the warm flames of a fire in the hearth.
MISSISSIPPI 1931
Maudie walked into the bedroom for a second time only to find the younger girls still snuggled together beneath the quilts, the frame of the large brass bed dwarfing their small bodies. She walked to the end of the bed and grabbed one leg of each and shook gently.
“You girls are going to be late for school if you don’t get up right this minute,” she admonished with half-hearted seriousness. Truth was she could seldom muster any real anger towards these two.
Faith popped her head out from under the covers and rubbed her eyes, her long blonde eyelashes amplifying their deep blue.
“OK, Mama, I’m getting up,” she chirped as she slid out of bed, searching the floor with her feet for her slippers.
Grace opened one eye, then closed it and rolled over with her back to Maudie.
“I don’t go to school,” she tried.
“Well, yes you do, little Missy. Kindergarten is school and the tardy bell will be ringing in less than an hour, so get up and bathe and come to breakfast or I’ll just have to throw you in the washing machine with those quilts this morning.” Maudie tickled her until Grace finally started to laugh and sat up in the bed.
Faith loved school. Her third-grade teacher remarked to Hardee and Maudie at the last PTA meeting that Faith was clearly gifted with intelligence, as her IQ tests showed. The teacher had prepared a long list of rather challenging books for her to read at home and Faith relished them. Grace, on the other hand, was none too happy about leaving the warm comfort of her mother’s skirts to venture into the world of concrete demands. She preferred the dreamy realm of her dolls and their teapots to the rigors of the three R’s. Faith tugged the slippers onto her feet and walked around the end of the bed to the other side. She pulled the covers back from around her little sister and put her arms out to help her down.
“Come on Gracie, let’s go get a bath. You’ll like it when you get to school, remember?” she encouraged.
“No, I don’t remember, and I don’t need help,” she replied as she spun her legs toward the side of the bed, then rolled over onto her stomach and slid off, holding on to the sheets until her tiptoes touched the ground.
Maudie smiled as she watched the two pad off to the bathroom, Faith’s hair in an angry mess at the crown of her head and Grace’s nightgown hitched up over her bottom.
“Don’t forget to brush your hair, Faith,” she added with affection as she turned and walked into the hallway leading to the dining room.
“OK, Mama,” the bright little voice called back from the other room.
In the dining room, Hannah sat in her highchair corralling her Rice Krispies into a little posse then eating a handful at a time, half of them spilling back onto the tray. The older girls, Claire and Delta, were finishing their breakfast, in a hurry to catch their bus to the junior high school. Brett was already gone, having left with Hardee at dawn to help him with some crates at the Trading Post before going to class.
Mornings were always a little chaotic in the Wiggins’ house. Maudie would get up first, in the last of the still dark night, to start breakfast. Hardee had promised her a gas stove even before they had left Alabama, but that was before the run on the banks and the collapse of the economy. Such a luxury had not even been a thought since moving to Hattiesburg. The Trading Post had not turned a profit yet. Tough times meant hard work, and Maudie got up early to bring in the wood and fire up the old cast iron stove. The spent ashes from the night before had to be shoveled out and carted off. Paper and kindling had to be coaxed to a flame and wood judiciously added before a sufficient fire was roaring. Often, Delsey would come down from the shop for breakfast and she would end up helping Maudie, but she had left the day before for Alabama to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family. Maudie always served breakfast in waves, eggs and bacon for Hardee and Brett, then cereal and biscuits for the girls in two separate shifts. Classes at the junior high school started a half hour earlier than the primary school, so Claire and Delta ate first, then Emma, Faith and Grace. Their staggered schedules gave Maudie extra time to get everyone ready for the day.
She and Hardee were both working from early morning until late at night just to survive. There were nine mouths to feed, and Ava, her husband Cecil, and the baby would drop by at mealtime more often than not, making it an even dozen. Maudie rejoiced in having all her children around her despite the extra work, but she was seeing less and less of Hardee as he spent long hours at the store. When he did come home, she could smell the bootleg whiskey on him as soon as he came near. They had more than one argument about the sin of intemperance. She genuinely believed that whiskey was a tool of the devil. She already felt the wedge of it driving her and Hardee apart, especially when he bent forward to kiss her at night with his stale breath. Between her fear of getting pregnant again, now that Hannah was toddling, and her abhorrence of Hardee’s drinking, she had begun to leave the marriage bed and sleep most nights by herself on a small cot in the screened-in porch. She was not sure how they had come to this. As she emerged from the long hall into the dining room, she tried to push the troubles with him out of her mind.
“Thank you for watching Hannah, girls,” she said to Claire and Delta. “I got the little ones up so y’all get on down to the bus stop. I love you so much and you be careful, OK? By the way, have you seen Emma?”
“I think she ran over to Miss Ruth’s,” mumbled Claire, as she stuffed the last half of her biscuit into her mouth and picked up her books to leave.
“Lawd, I will never tame that child,” moaned Maudie.
She walked out the front door with Claire and Delta and waved as they turned right onto the sidewalk. Maudie started across the street to Ruth’s but just as she reached the curb, she saw Emma hightailing it home from the field next to the Moody’s house. When she got within earshot, Maudie let her have it.
“Young lady, you get in this house before I have your hide. What have you been doing? You are supposed to be dressed and ready for school.”
“Nothin’. I ain’t done nothin’ and I am ready for school. Just need my breakfast.”
Maudie looked at her closely and could see that she was dressed in the plaid jumper and cotton shirt that Maudie had ironed for her the night before, but Emma’s collar was askew, and the sleeves of her shirt were full of fresh wrinkles. One of her mud splattered saddle oxfords was missing its shoelace.
“First of all, it isn’t ‘ain’t’, and if I find you’ve been hiding overalls in the Moody’s field again, we’re going to have another come-to-Jesus. Where is your shoelace?”
“Dunno.”
Maudie had no way of knowing that Emma had used it to tie up her handkerchief, full of new marbles procured just that morning. The handkerchief and marbles were stuffed in a new hiding place, along with her overalls. Emma traded Buck Beasley an old pocketknife that Brother had given her, freshly oiled and honed, for five Cat’s eyes, two aggies, a purie, an oxblood and the new shooter, a big round steely. She loved the cold smooth feel of that steely, the heft of it propped on her thumb and nestled atop the curved knuckle of her finger.
“Don’t know,” Maudie admonished. “Well you’ll just have to tie up your shoe with twine this morning because I don’t have any spare laces. There’s a roll of it on the workbench under the carport. You can get it after you eat. Now go on inside and get your breakfast.” She gave her a firm but painless pat on the rear as she ushered her onto the sidewalk and into the house.
Although Maudie understood the point of ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ she had never been able to abide the tenor of it. Her faith in Our Heavenly Father was stronger because it had been negotiated by free will, and she believed that a child’s moral compass should be oriented not by the fear of God, but by the love of her earthly mother.
Back in the dining room, Faith and Grace assembled themselves at the table and were teaching Hannah new words.
“Light!” Grace said as she pointed to the lamp hanging over the table. “Say Light.”
“Yite,” Hannah parroted, holding up a lone Rice Krispy between her plump thumb and forefinger, as if to feed it to the inanimate brass and glass fixture suspended overhead.
Maudie and Emma walked into the dining room and Emma plopped down in the seat next to Grace.
“You smell like a cat’s patootie,” Grace said, wrinkling her nose. She had heard the phrase on the playground at school, used to taunt one of the country kids who carried the fetid smell of the chronically unbathed, who lived in a house with no indoor plumbing. She was not sure what a ‘cat’s patootie’ was or what it smelled like. Grace was simply responding to the scent of Emma’s ripe, prepubescent sweat after the sprint across the Fletcher’s field and whatever else she had been up to.
“Shut up,” piped Emma.
“You shut up.”
Faith looked at them from across the table and held up her right index finger to her lips and whispered,
“Shush. Don’t let Mama hear you.” It wasn’t clear if she was protecting her mother from the bickering or her sisters from a scolding.
Maudie had disappeared into the kitchen and returned momentarily with three steaming bowls of Cream of Wheat. She put the pink porcelain bowls on the white linen placemats in front of each girl, then carved a generous slab of butter from the block in the middle of the table and dropped equal portions into each bowl. She used her fingers to crumble a light sprinkling of brown sugar onto the top of their cereal.
“Emma, would you please pour everyone a glass of milk,” Maudie instructed, “and I’ll go get Hannah’s cereal and the rest of the biscuits and honey.”
Emma complied, silently but willingly, grateful that she had apparently gotten off light for her morning’s transgressions. She felt fairly sure that Maudie would never find her overalls, hidden in the hollow of an old oak, so she planned to sneak over after school and change clothes before she went to play in the woods by the creek. That is, if she didn’t have homework that her mother discovered first. Emma was plenty smart for the work of fifth grade and could complete her homework in short order. It’s just that she had better things to do. The Jasper boys had built a tree house deep in the woods with a rope ladder that could be pulled up after they climbed in. But she knew the magic whistle and they always let the rope down for her when she called. She had won their favor by bringing them the plundered treasure from her father’s collecting dish on the hall tree that stood in the small foyer of the house…. the trimmed remnant of a half cigar, a pocketful of peppermints, or the gleaming copper from a new roll of pennies. Hardee ignored the minor thefts. Emma put the glasses of milk in front of Grace and Faith and they each poured a little into their bowls of Cream of Wheat, stirring it into a wet swirl. They ate with hearty appetites.
