Nancy A. Collins, page 3
“You don’t care! You don’t care about me at all!” Hester bellowed, knocking her mother’s sewing basket off the kitchen table with one sweep of her hand. “All you’re interested in is that-that-Nutcracker! You think you can turn him into Daddy and make everything like it used to be! But you can’t! Daddy’s dead!”
“Hester!” Mrs. Killigrew grabbed her daughter with her left hand, twisting Hester’s right arm behind her back. “That’s it, young lady! That’s all I’m going to take out of you!” she spat, raising her right hand.
“Go ahead! Hit me! Slap me!” Hester taunted through her tears. “Beat on me all you like! It’s still the truth!”
Mrs. Killigrew hesitated for a moment then lowered her hand, pulling her daughter to her bosom. Hester struggled for a moment, but her mother’s grip was firm. After a few seconds she began to cry-great, wracking sobs-while Mrs. Killigrew held her daughter tight, rocking her like she used to do, not so many years ago.
000
The Killigrew family always sat in the third pew on the left hand side of the aisle. It was a tradition that dated back before Hester’s birth. For as long as she could remember, her family always sat there during Sunday services.
As they walked down the aisle, everybody turned and looked. Hester’s cheeks glowed like hut coals. She could feel Fanny Walchanski’s greedy eyes on them, devouring every detail for later recitation. The thought of what she would have to face at school the next day made Hester tighten her grip on Francis’s hand. Her little brother began to whine, but she quickly hushed him.
She could hear the members of the congregation mumbling amongst themselves, the ladies agitating the still air with their fans as they craned their necks for a better look. Reverend Cakebread watched from behind the pulpit as the Killigrews approached the front of the church. He was a round, pink-faced man with heavy eyebrows the size and shape of caterpillars. Right then the caterpillars looked like they were trying to crawl into his hair.
Aside from being keenly aware that everybody was watching them, the service went as usual, with Francis curling up on the bench for a nap next to his sister halfway into Reverend Cakebread’s sermon. Bored by the minister’s nasal drone, Hester found herself looking at the Nutcracker and was startled to glimpse the faint outline of her father’s profile. Without realizing what she was doing, she brushed her fingers against his sleeve.
The Nutcracker turned his head and looked at her, breaking the illusion. The sadness in his eyes reminded Hester of the time she found the rabbit in the snare.
And then Reverend Cakebread was saying; “…and if there are any announcements any of you in the congregation would care to make right now..?”
Mrs. Killigrew stood up, nervously straightening the shawl around her shoulders. “I would like to make an announcement, if I could, Reverend.” The minister nodded his agreement, and Mrs. Killigrew turned to face the congregation. “As you no doubt already heard, my husband-Captain Ferris Killigrew, who I had thought lost to this world-has been returned to his rightful home, thanks to Our Lord. He is now once more fit to reclaim his place in society. I would like to extend an open invitation to all of you here today to stop by our place after church and help my family celebrate God’s mercy. There will be food and drink for everyone.”
After Mrs. Killigrew sat down Mr. Eichorn stood up and announced that there would be a Ku Klux meeting that night at the ruins of Old Man Stackpole’s plantation house, then they sang the benediction and church was over.
000
There was a fly walking on the potato salad. Mrs. Killigrew waved a hand at the intruder, only to have it land on one of the deviled eggs. “Mama, can’t we eat yet?”
“You know better than to ask me that, Hester! You know we’ve got company coming!” She gave her son’s hand a quick slap, forcing him to let go of an oatmeal cookie. “Francis! No!”
Francis plopped down on the floor and began to cry, sucking on his chastised fingers.
Ferris Killigrew sat on the parlor love seat, looking like a well dressed scarecrow, his hands folded in his lap. He could not bring himself to meet his wife’s eyes.
Mrs. Killigrew massaged her forehead, trying to stall the sick headache she knew was coming. All the money she spent on food.
Killing one of their best chickens. And no one had the decency to show up. Not one. She retreated into the kitchen, where Mammy Joella was grinding Ferris’s evening allotment of grits and blackstrap molasses into a fine mush.
“An’one show up yet?”
“Not yet. No, I take that back. Reverend Cakebread came by just after church.”
“Tha’s a preacher-man’s job, payin’ visits on folks no-one else wants t’mess wif.”
“That’s not true! Ferris was born and raised in Seven Devils! He has plenty of friends! You know that!”
The old woman sighed wearily but did not halt grinding the grits into baby food. “Tha’s fore the war. Things different now. Folks hereabouts used to thinkin’ Mr. Ferris daid. They mu’ comfortable wif him that way, I reckon.”
“What are you babbling about?” snapped Mrs. Killigrew.
“If’n he’d come back whole stead’a crippled-up, things might be different. Mebbe. But he ain’t. He reminds folks things ain’t ne’er gunna be th’ same. Like us black folks. He’s embarassin’. He reminds folks of what they done lost.”
Mrs. Killigrew stared, dumbstruck, at the gnarled old Negress. In the fifteen years since she’d become a member of the Killigrew home, this was the only time Mammy Joella had spoken to her about something besides housework and childcare. It was as if the doorstop had suddenly taken to spouting prophecy.
The moment his mother left the room, Francis got off the floor and helped himself to the oatmeal cookies. After satisfying his hunger, he waddled over to his father and offered him a cookie.
Killigrew accepted the offering, nodding his thanks and trying his best to smile around the jaw. It wasn’t easy. He ruffled his son’s curls and allowed his hand to linger, caressing the boy’s cheeks and smooth brow with his trembling fingers.
When he looked up, he saw Hester standing in the parlor door, watching him the way you’d look at a bug.
000
He was found the next morning, hanging from the chandelier hook in the parlor, still dressed in his nightshirt. His face was darkened with congested blood while his lower jaw seemed to glow with rosy health. Although the Sunday-go-to-meeting jaw wasn’t any good for eating or talking, it had proved adequate for suicide.
Mrs. Killigrew found him. She stared at her husband’s body for a long moment then went upstairs and woke Hester. She told her daughter to take the mule and ride into town and fetch Mr. Mouzon, Seven Devil’s undertaker.
After she made sure Hester had left by the back door, Mrs. Killigrew went to her room and dressed. When she returned to the parlor to await the undertaker’s arrival, she discovered Mammy Joella standing in the doorway, staring up at her former master.
“Mammy Joella?”
The old woman grunted to herself and turned, brushing past her mistress without looking at her.
“Joella!”
Her only answer was the slamming of the back door.
000
Hester sat on the love seat and watched the wax trickle down the sides of the thick white candles burning at either end of the Nutcracker’s coffin. She was dressed in her best black dress, her hair fixed with a black velvet ribbon. She swung her feet back and forth, watching the tips of her shoes disappear then reappear from under the hem of her skirt.
She could hear her mother talking in hushed tones with Reverend Cakebread and Mr. Mouzon in the kitchen. Francis was crawling on his hands and knees on the worn Persian carpet, pushing his little wooden train round and round in circles. Hester knew she should tell him to stop grubbing around on the floor in his good suit, but she also knew that would only make him cry, and she really didn’t want to deal with that right now.
Hester wished Mammy Joella was still around so she wouldn’t be expected to keep an eye on her little brother all the time. But Mammy Joella had disappeared the same day the Nutcracker hanged himself, walking away from her cabin with nothing but the clothes on her back, a gunny sack full of bread, some goat cheese and a fruit jar full of sassafras tea.
Mama had complained to Sheriff Cooper about it, but he hadn’t been of much help.
“What do you expect me to do about it, Nell? Set th’ hounds on her? Niggers can leave whene’er they see fit, now.”
Still, Hester thought her mother was holding up well, under the circumstances. In many ways she seemed more tired than griefstricken. To Hester’s knowledge, her mother had yet to shed a tear. Whenever she responded to the condolences offered her, there was hollowness in her voice. Hester knew that, secretly, her mother was relieved that it was all over; that she no longer had to pretend that the Nutcracker was her husband. Better to bury him and get on with the business of living. She wondered what new schoolyard taunt Fanny Walchanski would dream up to commemorate the event and was surprised to discover she no longer really cared what Fanny Walchanski thought or did.
Hester stared at the Nutcracker, stretched out in his narrow pine box, a lily clamped to his motionless chest. Mr. Mouzon had done a good job, for once. The Nutcracker’s face was now the same color as his jaw, giving his appearance a continuity it had lacked in life.
As she stared at the Nutcracker’s profile, a weird feeling crept over her, like the one in church two days earlier. For a moment she found herself looking at the face of her father, Ferris Killigrew. Then the vision wavered and was gone. In its place was the dead Nutcracker; only now the rabbit was free of the snare.
Hester felt something on her face and touched her cheek. She stared at the tears for a long time before she realized she was crying.
SEVEN DEVILS
It was 1925. Eunice McQuistion was five, going on six. Her parents lived in Little Rock, but that summer her mother was experiencing a particularly troubled pregnancy, so her paternal grandparents volunteered to look after Eunice until the baby came.
Eunice’s Grandpa Junius and Granny Lucille lived in Choctaw County, in a small town called Seven Devils. Eunice had never really been to Seven Devils before, although her parents claimed they’d taken her down on the train to visit her grandparents when she was just a baby. Eunice didn’t remember any of it, so as far as she was concerned it never really happened.
One morning in May Eunice’s daddy took her down to the train station and put her on the train to Seven Devils. He gave her an apple to eat and a dime to buy soda pop along the way and kissed her goodbye, telling her the next time he saw her she’d have a brand-new baby brother or sister, then handed her over to the conductor. Eunice tried to be brave and not cry too much.
When the train pulled up to the station at Seven Devils, Eunice saw a old man waiting on the platform. He was tall and skinny, with white hair and wire-rim glasses. Although she had never seen him before, she knew he had to be her Grandpa Junius.
As she got off the train, the old man stepped forward to take her bag, smiling down at her with his cornflower-blue eyes. Hidden within the folds and wrinkles of his face, she could glimpse the likeness of her father.
“You must be Eunice. Wait until Mother sees you! Why, you’re the picture of your Aunt Gladys when she was a girl!”
After collecting her luggage, they walked to end of the train platform, where his buckboard waited. Eunice’s father drove a Model T, but Grandpa Junius preferred mules to horse-power.
If there was ever love at first sight, that was what happened between Junius McQuistion and his granddaughter.
Grandpa Junius and Granny Lucille lived outside Seven Devils proper, their house being located on what was known as Plantation Road. As they bounced along the ruts, Eunice’s basic impression of the area was that it was very, very fiat and very, very green, with huge fields of cotton and sorghum interspersed with bayous and forests. It was also very hot and humid, the chirping of the cicadas becoming a persistent, distant hum the farther they got from town.
Granny Lucille was waiting patiently for them on the front porch glider, shelling peas into a big metal bowl in her lap. The elder McQuistions lived in the same house in which they had raised their five children. They had added on a couple of rooms and had the building wired for electricity, but it still lacked indoor plumbing. There was a privy in the back yard, along with a old barn that housed their brace of mules and a milk cow, as well as a fenced-in chicken coop. Further back was a small truck garden, where Junius tended neat rows of tomatoes, corn, cabbage, watermelon, and snap-peas. And when Eunice saw the fine old oak tree in the front yard and the brand-new swing hanging from its lowest limb, she knew this was going to be her best summer ever.
000
Junius McQuistion was sixty-six years old and in astonishing health for a man who had come of age amidst great hardship and deprivation.
His parents came to America from Scotland in 1855, settling in the hills of Tennessee, where they struggled to make a living as farmers, only to lose what little they had during the Civil War. Orphaned at fifteen, the family home and holdings lost, Junius made his way to Memphis, where he worked on the duck, loading cotton onto the riverboats that traveled up and down the Mississippi. In 1876 he fell in love with and married Lucille Cavanaugh, the foreman’s daughter.
While he was a good, conscientious worker, there was little promise of advancement at his job. Then, in 1879, he met Ezra Stackpole, a wealthy land-owner from Arkansas desperate to find reliable, educated employees to help him convert his family’s plantation, Sugar House, into a sugar refinery. Stackpole offered him a job as Sugar House’s dock foreman and he took it, bringing his wife and young family with him.
Forty-six years and five children later, he and his wife were was still there and, thanks to the arrival of the railroad and timber industries in Choctaw County at the turn of the century, both of which showed interest in property Junius had acquired over the years, the McQuistions were the second wealthiest family in town, just after the Stackpoles.
Not that Eunice knew any of this at the time of her arrival in Seven Devils. All she was aware of was that Grandpa Junius and Granny Lucille were her father’s parents and that they sent her presents on her birthdays and Christmas. The history of Seven Devils, not to mention its arcane social hierarchy, belonged to the world of grown-ups and had nothing to do with her.
But not for long.
000
They were in Badinger’s Grocery, Grandpa Junius mulling over his wife’s shopping list. Although his eyesight had begun to fail in the last few years, Junius was loathe to admit it. Eunice’s job on these excursions was to “decipher” her grandmother’s perfectly legible handwriting.
While they were waiting to be waited on, a middle-aged heavy-set man dressed in a rumpled seersucker suit, the armpits sodden in the July heat, entered the store. While Eunice had never seen the stranger before, she found herself clutching her grandfather’s pants leg in fear. Junius stiffened slightly at the sight of the large, florid-faced man. “Afternoon, Asa.”
The bigger man grunted something approximating a response as he brushed past Junius. Mr. Badinger stopped midway through filling Mrs. Winthrop’s order, a nervous smile on his lips.
“Good day, Mr. Stackpole! I’ll be right with you!”
“Well, I never!” Mrs. Winthrop sniffed, drawing herself up to her full height of 5‘2”.
Asa Stackpole pulled a large, black cigar from the breast pocket of his seersucker, bit the end off and spat it onto the floor, fixing the retired school teacher with a cold stare, his eyes as small and greedy as a pig’s. Mrs. Winthrop quickly averted her gaze and busied herself with checking and re-checking her half-filled order.
Five minutes later, Asa Stackpole left Badinger’s Grocery with a box filled with various groceries and sundries, a trail of foul-smelling cigar smoke hanging in his wake.
“Sorry about that,” Mr. Badinger said weakly, mopping his wide brow with a handkerchief he fished from his back pocket. “But you know how those Stackpoles get when they have to wait.”
“Like father, like son,” Mrs. Winthrop sniffed. “You shouldn’t cater to that brute, Caleb! Even if he is the richest man in Choctaw County!”
“What can I say, Miz Winthrop? He holds the note on this place. I’ll be another five years paying him off.”
Mrs. Winthrop shook her head in disgust, nearly unseating her sunbonnet. “I like to think of myself as a good Christian, but I’ll be blessed if I can find a single kind word for Asa Stackpole and his family.”
While Mr. Badinger finished filling Mrs. Winthrop’s order, a small black boy hurried into the store, grabbing Junius’ wrist. Eunice watched as her grandfather bent down so the child could whisper hurriedly into his ear.
Mr. Badinger, who had climbed a ladder to retrieve a bolt of cloth, frowned down at the wide-eyed negro child. “What are you doing in here, boy? You know you’re not allowed in here…!”
Junius straightened up, folding the grocery list and stuffing it in his pocket. “It’s alright, Caleb. The boy’s on an errand.” He turned to address the black child. “You tell your ma I’ll be there directly.” He took his grandchild’s small, smooth hand in his large, wrinkled one. “C’mon, Eunie.”
“Where we going, Grandpa?”
“We’re going to see Ash, child. He’s bad sick.”
Ash was the small, bald banty-rooster of a man with skin the color and consistency of crepe paper who did odd jobs for Grandpa Junius. Granny Lucille said Ash had been born a slave and was a full-grown man when Grandpa Junius first met him, forty-five years ago.
Ash lived in Niggertown, Seven Devils’ shadow community. According to the public census, it was part of the same township, but in reality the negroes had their own grocery, their own churches, and their own restaurants.
Ash’s two-room shotgun was situated on the far end of Railroad Street, close enough to the tracks that its foundations shivered every time a train passed. There was a small crowd gathered on the front stoop that spilled into the yard. Eunice pressed herself against her grandfather when the dark, sweating faces turned to stare at them as the buckboard drew to a halt.
