Echo Tree, page 9
“You crazy, man. They ain’t go no business astin questions without givin out some pay for it. That’s law.”
“ What kinda questions they ask?”
“All kinds, but they tryin to find out if we gonna register and vote. My old papa he ain’t vote, and he said niggers never vote in Haxfall County.”
“Damn,” said Layton, hitting his hand in his fist. “That little brown girl bout the prettiest thang I ever seen in a cotton field.”
“Yeah, but you mess with that white gal and I know them crackers hear about it as fast as thunder follow lightnin. They come after you like a hound on rabbit tail.”
“Man, ain’t nobody thinkin about that white girl. But I tell you somethin, man. I think I’m gonna make it back to the field tomorrow, just to get her to ast me questions.”
“Yeah. Your head messed up, nigger. I can see that.”
Layton slapped his fist again. They were moving up a hill along the dirt road. Large granite rocks, gaping out of the ground like teeth, faded into the shadows. The two boys felt the wind pushing at their faces, and after a brief silence, both instinctively picked up their pace.
Layton Fields hadn’t planned on going to the fields tomorrow, but all week there had been a lot of talk about the civil rights kids down there taking a poll. They actually picked cotton with the people. Layton had hoped that they would make the rounds to his field, but so far they hadn’t made it. Now that tomorrow was their last day, he would have to miss school again. Besides he could use the three dollars. “Hot shank!” And he hit his fist, thinking about the girl.
When they reached the point where the road leveled off, Layton threw one last rock. He threw it over the house which sat some distance back off the road.
“Loose trigger, Layton Fields, you a crazy nigger. You be done busted a window out your own house.”
“I ain’t chunkin at my house, fool.”
“What you chunkin for? Look like to me, you save that arm. Hard as I pick today, you don’t see me runnin around in the dirt pickin up rocks and chunkin in the sky at nothin, do you?”
“How much cotton you pick today?”
“Told you once. Ninety-five.”
“I beat you then. You work all day, pick ninety-five. I work from noon and pick sixty.”
“How come you work from noon? You come all the way down in the field for nothin. That ain’t no money—sixty.”
“I got paid. Ha, ha! Don’t worry bout that. Hap Kelly, he ask me help him unload that boll weevil killer. Then he ask me help him fix that cotton pickin machine. He say he pay me for hundred pounds if I pick fifty.”
“So what you want me to do bout it?”
“Thought if you wanted a chance at some easy money …”
“Hell, I don’t see nothin easy bout that. If some of that bug juice get on me, it eat a hole in me same as it do a damn boll weevil. Man, you must think I’m crazy. You sure want to see that old skinny girl a lot.”
“She ain’t skinny, man. I like to just talk with her once.”
“Shucks, what a old cottonmouth scoun like you gonna say to a rich chick like that? I bet she one of the richest niggers in the United States.”
“Ah man, shut up. She’ll talk to me.”
“Bout what? Bout what?”
Layton turned and faced the other boy as they approached an unkempt rose hedge. The thorny branches, dipping and blowing in the wind, leaned and flopped over a rotting fenceprop. The sky was still red, but evening had pushed away, and the fading of the shadows ushered in the night. From Layton Fields’ house came the deep rhythmic pulse of gospel music. Two front windows, lit up on either side of the door, appeared like eyes.
Floyd laughed. “Bout what? Bout cotton and how much you pick and if you gonna vote when you get old enough, and do your mother and father vote?”
“She talk to me. Don’t worry,” he said, going around the rose hedge. He fell forward as if he were going to fall, caught himself on his left arm, spun around and sat down on the step of the porch.
Floyd looked at him from beyond the bush. Neither said anything. Floyd slowly came around the hedge and up the rock path where the remnants of an unkempt flower garden lay brown and dark.
“So you see me with Florence. Don’t get mad.”
Layton clenched his fist.
“Hell,” said Floyd, “that black gal like you, but you just ig her. You mess with that city chick, ’n she gonna cut you down like a hoeblade cut a weed. She ain’t studyin bout no young nigger like you, got mud all over his shoes and cotton in his mouth.”
Layton stood up, stepped off, as Floyd approached the step. Layton headed around the house. One of the rose bushes struck his neck. “Ow!” He slung his hand at it as if striking a mosquito. He went around the side of the house. “Yeah, you’ll see, Mr. Floyd Moss. She talk to me.”
He wanted to get away. He didn’t care if Floyd followed him in the house or not. He had to get away from him. It was dark now on the east side of the house. He could hear his mother working to the sound of radio music. His grandfather was still up the Lane with the Ryans. They were getting ready to kill hogs, and his grandfather was an old hand at that. Layton struck his fist. Lord, he had to go to the cotton patch tomorrow. She was the prettiest dark brown thang he ever seen from New York. And she talked so nice and pretty. He had never heard a voice sound so pretty. He had heard pretty singing, but never had he been conscious of the sound of the human voice. Not like that. She must be what angels sounded like.
He went around to the back of the house. Floyd was hollering at him. He didn’t holler back. Floyd hollered several times. “You comin tomorrow? Hey! Layton Fields! You pickin tomorrow? Hey? Cotton or rocks?”
He went into the house. The screen door slammed whack!
“That you, Layton?” His mother’s voice, mixing with the sound of the wind and hushed chill of the evening, followed the slamming of the door.
Layton stomped his feet free of dirt before he went into the kitchen. He replied with some vague, and reluctant, monosyllable that barely he could hear. He knew he would have to plan what he was going to say to Rosemarie Stiles. What was he going to do to get her to talk to him? After all, nobody had interviewed him yet. The gospel sound of the Five Blind Boys suddenly came up. He went though the kitchen door, feeling bits of dried mud crumple beneath his feet.
His mother was building a fire in the wood stove. She was a stout woman, brown-skinned, heavy boned, but with a delicately chiseled face. Her eyes swept over Layton as he stomped through the kitchen. The dull lamp seemed to waver in its brightness as the wind and the night approached and struck the old house. Shadows in the room hid in corners. Mrs. Fields reached behind the stove and brought out the last stick of wood. With one sure motion she fed it to the tongue of flame leaping from the large iron stove.
“Who that hollerin like a crazy man?”
“Floyd Moss,” he said.
“Boy, I need some wood to cook yawl som’teat.” She never stopped her motions. A rolled-up, wet newspaper lay on the window sill. A few flies buzzed near it. The smell of fish hit Layton as he passed by. He knew his mother would want something done. He was planning to go down to the Blue Goose Inn. He shoulda never come home. If he’d had some clothes, he’d been down to the Blue Goose before dark. If Rosemarie ever dropped in … and he knew she might, because Floyd had said that twice the civil rights people had stopped in. But Layton knew that it would be dangerous if that white girl ever came into the Blue Goose. But if Rosemarie came, nobody would pay it any mind, except him…. He thought again…. Knowing those crazy niggers down there, he knew they might try to mess with her. The thought made Layton clench.
“Boy, didn’t you hear me talkin to you?”
He lit the lamp in his room. “Yes mam, I get it. But don’t fix nothin for me. I’m eatin … in town.”
“Better save them few pennies you make out there. I need some money now for groceries. What you talkin bout eatin out? Eatin out where?”
He knew she wouldn’t understand.
“You better stay away from that place. All you do is waste your money.”
Layton pulled out a suit his brother used to wear before he left home. It was an old-style suit, faded, torn, and unpressed. He tried not to listen to his mother. He shook the suit. Dust leaped from it like smoke. He threw the suit on the bed.
Another gospel song filled the house from the living room. His mother broke into a chorus.
“Didn’t papa cut some wood?” Layton asked. He knew where the old man was, but he wanted her to know that somebody else could keep the place supplied with wood as well as he could. His grandfather was doing nothing all day. Why couldn’t he take time out from messing with other folks’ hogs and horses and cut more wood than a couple of sticks now and then?
“Eatin or not, you better get me some wood.”
Layton marched out of the house. He didn’t mind getting wood for her, but he was tired. At least he was sorry he ever came straight home. Maybe he should’ve stopped in town and put a down payment on one of those silk vests that he saw some guys wearing. Maybe he could get himself a shirt, an English collar, French cuffs, and all…. Then she would know him.… She talk to him then….
He went out the front door. The sun had gone, but a faint red glow sifted upwards as if the hills were squeezing out the last bit of color. Layton paused for a second on the porch. He looked up the lane to see if his grandfather was hobbling along. A rooster crowed. Layton hurried to the woodpile in the back of the house. Suddenly he became conscious of the dying and the falling of things. He could hear in his head an echo and he could see where the echo was going without even taking his eyes off the axe and the echo was soft and pretty like a human voice and it flew like a bird flies across the sky, slow and fast but never too fast, and up and down in the wind and all he knew suddenly is that he felt real good and nobody could tell him different.
He raised the double edged axe and brought it down on an old oak log. The log had been taking a whacking since the beginning of the week. He struck the log, splitting it in one stroke with a grunt. Every time he heard his voice, something came alive and took him further and further away, and made him grasp at some notion, some vague connection of what to say to her. He wanted to laugh but he had to show Floyd and them ugly gals that he wasn’t gonna pick cotton all his life. He didn’t care what Floyd Moss said about Florence. That silly country gal couldn’t do nothing for him except one thing. He picked up the wood and hurried to the house, kicking open the screen door and dumping the wood down in the kitchen wood box behind the stove. The screen door slammed behind him.
Somethin’s got a hold on me
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Somethin’s got a hold on me
Lord, I know somethin’s got a hold on me.
Mrs. Fields had turned the radio up louder. Layton watched her sprinkle corn meal over six long gutted carp that lay on the table in a large platter. Hot grease boiled and popped in a black skillet on the stove in a rhythm all its own. Mrs. Fields, wearing an apron made from flour sacks, hummed and her voice held as much fire and conviction as the singers. Listening to her, Layton suddenly winced. He liked gospel but he didn’t know how to like it when he was feeling good thinking about her. He felt ashamed. But something irritated him.
“Mama, you got to play that thing so loud?” He pretended his head hurt, knocking it a few times with the palm of his hand. “I can hear that thing all over the Lane.”
Hardly before he had finished, his mother turned and faced him.
“Boy, what’s ailin you?”
Layton knew that he had made a mistake. He felt a funny feeling rise inside him. He turned and was going out of the kitchen. It was a feeling he got, when, walking along the levee, he would come up on a bush or a pile of dirt and something would tell him ‘look before you step,’ but he wouldn’t look, maybe just because he was in a hurry, but mostly because he was plain foolish, and every time he didn’t look there would be a snake or a lizard there. Then he knew he had made a mistake, but it was too late because his foot was stepping there at that moment.
“Layton Fields, don’t you hear me talkin to you?”
“Yes mam, I hear.” He grabbed at the suit, flung its dusty shape back across the bed, and then sensing some wild terror running loose in the room and outside the house, he leaped off the bed toward the kitchen.
“Mama, I got to get some money.”
She stood there, the dim light of the kitchen not hiding the troubled ridge that had marred her finely chiseled face. The sound of the Five Blind Boys rose again….
I come to The Garden alone
“I gon quit and get me a job …”
His mother turned away, placing a mealed fish in the skillet as if she had not heard him. It was a familiar gesture and Layton, coming to the doorway, knew again that he had made the wrong step. But he did not care. Nobody knew how he felt about Rosemarie. He would quit school. He would pick no more cotton. He would get a job in Greenville or even go to Memphis, and he would make some money, some real money, not three or four dollars a day picking cotton…. That wasn’t no money. He felt ashamed of staying out of school just to pick cotton. Not that he liked school, but to go to the cotton field…. He gathered himself to approach his mother.
The sound of the singing surged in the house. With the rhythm of the music going, he knew that he didn’t have to follow up what he said. He could just let it ride, let what she had said ride, and put on a sweater and his good shoes and make it out of the house before his grandfather came in to eat. …He could do that and just go up to the Blue Goose, mess around outside there a while, and come back before it was too late.
He wouldn’t go to school tomorrow either, and then maybe Monday he would start in and go the whole week. But it was Friday tomorrow. Only one day left in school.
He dug in a cardboard box stuffed with musty old clothes and pulled out a ragged green sweater. “Mama, I got to get me some money.” The smell of fish rose to his nostrils. He wanted to get out of the house.
“Money ain’t worth losin your soul over.” She moved now with a hesitancy in her muscles. She knew the boy was troubled, and that he had been wanting money. But she also knew that he didn’t know the value of an education. She wanted him to stay in school and someday go to college. And here he was thinking about quitting high school. She put the last fish in the hot grease.
“But Mama, I can’t make no money pickin cotton, and Grandpa don’t make none … I got to get somethin for you.” He felt himself lying. He wasn’t good at lying to her.
“I know you gettin so you want things, Layton, but fore your papa died I got down on my knees. Lord, I did. And I prayed that He see me through so my youngest finish school. My oldest got away from here without finishin, but I see that I want my youngest to finish. You be round here tonight and talk with them voter people.”
“Aw, I’m gon finish school, but I first gots to get some money. We the poorest niggers …”
“Don’t use that word in this house!” She faced Layton. He slipped the sweater over his head and noticed for the first time, the terrible strain in his mother’s voice. Somehow, he wanted to reach and touch her. She was right about a lot of things, but he couldn’t give in on this one thing. He knew how he felt. That was all. He was going by how he felt. Her dark brown face, pulled and drawn, seemed to plead with him.
“I don’t want to hear no more of this talk, Layton. The Lord promise me what He gon do with my youngest. I ain’t worryin … Money or no money, you gon finish. I ain’t never seen Him failed yet … And if God can’t fail, then He ain’t gon let one of His children fail …”
With that she went to fixing plates on the table.
Layton turned to go, but he heard footsteps on the front porch, and the grunting and groaning of his grandfather. The old man knocked through the front door with his cane and then grunted about in the front. Layton thought about going out the back, but something had got a hold of him. He went back into his room, kicked the tiny stove with his foot, looked at his school book in the corner, looked at the dusty suit sprawled on the bed like a broken body….
For a second, the terror that had raced about the room and outside in the yard came upon him in a sudden heave of hatred for his mother and his grandfather, for Floyd Moss, for the whiteman who had all the niggers picking cotton, for the world, for the whole world, for everybody, except….
He went out the front, paying attention to his grandfather who had fallen wearily in his rocking chair and was puffing and blowing to catch his breath.
He frowned at Layton and Layton passed on through the door, closing it and looking at the darkness spitting out its stars. He walked outside around the house until a chill drove into him.
He wasn’t chilly. He wasn’t cold. He saw a star. He saw the moon, far over there, getting ready to jump there in the sky and take over from that head-whoopin sun. He looked at the faint profile of the bushes and the trees, bending, bowing, swaying, back and forth, dancing, a whole field of cotton in the night waiting for the morning, waiting for the morning….
After supper he talked to his grandfather. He wanted to get over to the Blue Goose Inn, but he would wait and go tomorrow. Friday night was better anyway. Something held him to the house. He didn’t know if it were fear, or what.
He got out his good shoes and began to clean them. He hadn’t worn them in months, not since the big baptism back in July at Blue Goose Lake. He looked at the shoes. They were cheap, worn, and had been polished once or twice. That was one thing he’d have to do. Polish his shoes. Everybody in the city wore clean shoes. He knew that. Anytime you went anywhere outside of the damn country, people wore decent things. They never had mud on them. He could hear his grandfather now, complaining about the weather not being right for killing hogs. His mother was standing next to the radio now, where she had propped the ironing board. Layton could see her face, and there was something about the way she had told him he was her youngest. …Somethin about it…. Maybe he wouldn’t go out to the Blue Goose. Maybe he’d stay home and think about what he was going to say to Rosemarie Stiles….
