Strange Fruit, page 16
Tut straightened the wheels of the car.
Yesterday—today—yesterday—you couldn’t get it out of your mind. You couldn’t get little Grace out of your mind.
She did it for fun because she liked him … Grace … no more than a baby, it seemed to them, but with a body full-grown and lovely, went out to the woods, or in a car, somewhere, with that seventeen-year-old Paine boy, and let him have her … in sweet giving she let …
Lord … suppose Alma had done that. Suppose, that first year when her father had come as the new Methodist preacher to Maxwell, suppose young Alma had done that. Suppose he had had the nerve to take her some time when they were out walking on Sunday, behind a clump of bushes somewhere, had drawn her down by him in the warm sand. Would she … would she have laughed and let him … let him … laughing softly … drawing nearer … and he in sudden strength, feeling good, feeling good and strong, would have pressed her body down …
A horn blew long and angrily at him. Tut put on the brakes, wheeled sharply to the right. A Ford slowed as it passed him, a head leaned out the window. “You were sound asleep, Doc! Better ease up and get some rest.”
Doc drove carefully into his driveway, softly stopped the car.
Alma was sitting in the library. Waiting dinner for him. He’d go in and talk to her about Grace. Should have told her last night. Alma would agree that he’d done the only thing he could do.
He went in, quietly sat down. Alma did not ask about his morning calls. She sat calm, unmoving, on her face the abstracted expression which Tut had long ago learned to recognize as Alma-with-a-plan. Alma was planning something for them—for the good of them all. He looked at her guiltily. He was glad that she did not look at him, for he had the feeling that Alma would know what he had been thinking about—that she would see him in all his dirty-mindedness. My Lord, he thought, getting as nasty in my old age as Old Culpepper.
He surreptitiously looked at his watch. Two o’clock. Old Mrs. Reid had called twice before he left the office. He softly rattled his Jacksonville Times-Union and moved the ash tray a half inch, hoping Alma would suggest dinner. She gave no indication of having heard him. He began to dread Mrs. Reid’s third call. “I’m sorry, Alma,” voice tentative now. “Shall I call Henry?”
“If you will, Tut.” She quietly followed him into the dining room.
They sat facing each other as they had done for twenty-seven years, the two places between them now vacant.
Tut unfolded his napkin and waited for Henry to serve the vegetables.
Mrs. Deen picked up a slice of lemon.
“Couldn’t make it this morning,” said Tut. “How’s the meeting?”
“Brother Dunwoodie preached well. But little real response.”
“Oh, it takes time,” Tut said cheerily, “to work up feeling in a revival.”
She squeezed the lemon against the rim of her glass. “Neither of our children was there.” She dropped it into the tea, wiped her plump white fingers on her napkin.
“I’m sorry, dear.” Doc’s brown eyes scanned his wife’s face for embellishment of a subject too painful for words. He felt that he must make up to Alma for the shocking thoughts he had had about her, and searched now for a way to express his sympathy. “I’m surprised, really surprised at Laura,” he finally contributed. “Of course,” he hastened to add, as Alma’s face did not respond to this effort, “Laura has always been a great comfort to you.”
Mrs. Deen did not reply.
Tut looked up, surprised at her silence. “We’re fortunate,” Tut said, and stressed his words as if to rub out the interlinear doubts which her silence had now made legible, “we’re fortunate, both of us, Alma, to have such a daughter as Laura.” If she knew about Grace Stephenson she’d understand just how much they did have to be thankful for. “I tell you, parents sometimes don’t know how thankful they should be—”
Mrs. Deen put down her napkin and moved her foot on the rug in search of the butler’s bell. “Of course. Tut,” she spoke as if to a reiterative and trying child, “I fully appreciate Laura.”
As she lifted her hand he noticed the zigzag sparkle of diamonds and saw that her fingers were trembling. He felt in his wife a new quality of uncertainty. He had not realized before how old she was—how old we both are, he amended, for Tut’s thoughts were ordinarily as well sifted as his words. Past middle age—and showing it. And he looked at Alma’s breasts; he followed them, compressed flatly by her formfitting girdle to her thickened waist; his mind continued the scrutiny beyond his eye’s line of vision. Well, well, well, he thought, age sure creeps up on you. Yes sir, age.… He felt his thoughts straying back to his day-dream and jerked them away quickly, and then he saw in his mind the white cow. Sometimes that white cow would appear in his mind while he was reading up on a case, or driving along country roads, and sometimes he dreamed about her, and always when he envisioned that cow he thought of Alma. It had begun to give him actual worry, for it came into his mind so often and there was no sense to the thing. It had started, he remembered that clearly, one day when he had been driving out to the Rushton plantation, past lonely stretches of palmetto and pine. A big white cow had clambered up in the middle of the road and had stood gazing at him unwaveringly, and he had thought: “Now if that ain’t Alma all over,” and had laughed aloud, and as quickly hushed in shocked surprise when he realized what he had thought. And ever since, the thing had dogged his tracks.
Henry brought in the ice cream.
The telephone rang.
“Yas’m … yas’m … I sho will … Yas’m … No’m, she ain’t worried a-tall … No’m … Sho … Sho, Miss Laura. Thank you, mam …”
Tut smiled reassuringly at Alma.
“Miss Laura say don wait dinner on her—she stayin again wid de Harrises and Miss Jane.” Henry waited until Mrs. Deen thanked him, then with big strides made off to the kitchen as if he had a cotton field or two to cross. At the kitchen door he automatically stooped, but in his haste to relay the message to Eenie he forgot to use caution and struck his shoulder a hard blow against the door jamb, righted himself, eased through, closed the door behind him, lost his balance and dropped the tray.
Tut chuckled. “That boy belongs in a house about as much as a turpentine mule.”
“I’ve always told you that. Hasn’t enough sense to set a table. Look at this!”
“I know. But we’d hate to run him off after he’s been raised in our back yard.” Tut considered the subject closed. He finished his ice cream. “Good ice cream.”
“Tut—I want to arrange for Laura to go back to the university in September.”
Dr. Deen searched his wife’s face, but his glance ran as easily off that composed countenance as water down glass.
“Dr. Snell promised the place at Wesleyan to her when she gets her doctorate. She’s wasting her time in Maxwell.”
“But she’s just home from college. We’ve hardly seen the child. Let’s keep her with us awhile.”
“Maxwell is no place for her. Tut. I want to get her away. I want her to get her degree.”
The telephone was ringing. “Did you remember to speak to Tracy about the farm?”
“Yes, Alma.”
Tut answered the phone. It was Miss Sadie, the operator, saying that old Mrs. Reid had telephoned for Dr. Deen the third time, but she had told her that he was out on a call, that she would find him and he would come there in about half an hour. “Thought you might work in a little nap,” Miss Sadie chirped.
“Thanks, Miss Sadie. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Yes—a half hour later, as he drove toward old Mrs. Reid’s—yes, he’d spoken to Tracy about the farm. But he wondered how much good it had done. Talking about it only made him want to go back there himself. Like to live the rest of his life there … like to die there. It’d be a good thing to try to buy it back. Take about all they had except the drugstore to do it, but it would be worth it. Like to live out his old days there … Wonder if the kitchen rotted down … a good place to sit when you were a little fellow, up in the fireplace, watching Little Ma and old Poggy cook supper on the big stove. Sometimes hiding in its corner when Pa came in grumpy and blue. Back of the kitchen, beyond the first field was the family burying ground, closed in by old cedars … a place still waiting there for him and Elmer. Reckon Elmer would never get back … Ran away after a row once with Pa—alike as two peas Little Ma used to say—Elmer ran away to Texas. Quick-tempered and easy hurt and bold. Sometimes so bold it took your breath when you were little, and younger than him too. Little Ma used to say Elmer by time he was three months old was slapping her breast and biting her. And she’d laugh as she said it, and somehow her laughing would hurt Tut as if she had slapped him.
Yes … boys used to run away … to Texas … or farther west … some prospered … some you never heard from again. But nowadays, nowhere for boys to run, except to poolroom and Colored Town … Tracy a lot like Elmer. Must have inherited a lot of Elmer’s wildness. Must have. Never heard of any wildness in Alma’s family.
Maybe if he bought the farm, the boy would settle down, marry that nice little Dorothy Pusey, and leave colored women—Well, Tut suddenly justified his son, he’s no worse than plenty of boys! Plenty!
ELEVEN
Ed offered a cigarette.
“No,” said Sam, “chewing’s easier on these roads.”
“Trouble is, Eddie,” returning to their talk, “this thing you feel is shame, not pride. If it’s pride, it’s—” He slowed the car. A cow walked down the middle of the road in front of them, stopped, turned, gazed emptily at them.
Ed moved uneasily. Why doesn’t he blow at her?
“—a kind of coat you’re wearing to hide a dirty shirt under,” voice even, not worrying about the cow.
Cow sidled up to the fender, turned around, took her stance across the ruts—
Godamighty!
—relieved herself in massive deliberation, crossed to a patch of grass.
“South’s full of that kind of pride—that kind of shirt.”
Ed watched Sam’s hands as they lay easily on the wheel. Sunlight catching black hairs, lifting them off of brown flesh, outlining the scar across thick thumb made by a fishhook when they were kids. It had gone in deep. So deep Sam had made him take his knife and cut the flesh away, encouraging him, urging him on, while Ed cut and cried as he cut. “Now cut deeper,” he’d said, “cut around the hook.”
Ed had shaken his head dumbly.
“Sure you can! Anybody can cut a little flesh. Here, cut straight through.”
Ed had cut straight through, but he’d grown so sick at the pressure of flesh against the dull blade that he reeled dizzily and only Sam’s pulling him to the ground saved him from fainting. They’d sat there. Fishing poles laid up against a mayhaw bush, cans of bait on the grass, fish flopping against the palmetto stem on which they’d strung them … blood from Sam’s hand making a little wet spot on the sand. It shamed him to this day to think of it—Sam letting blood roll easily over his hand while he waited for Ed to get over his sickness.
Sam was talking now, slow words pushing through something deep as sand. Talking about Negroes, the South—Negroes, the North—Negroes—white folks—Negroes—jobs, when all in the world you want is to forget you’re Negro, that anybody is Negro—It was as if he had to get Ed straightened out about something, though God knows what. Well, you don’t have to listen.
Yeah … to think about that fainting spell shamed him. But all his life he’d been glad it was Sam and not Jack—if it had to be. Whatever Sam wanted, it wasn’t to take something away from his friends, while Jack was always measuring himself by other folks’ failures. They’d be swimming in the old days in Cow Pond. Sam would pick him out a cypress half across the pond and swim easily to it, and sit there watching the others. But Jack—it was always, “C’mon, Eddie, race me to the old log across there … race me to that stump … race me across the pond.” And if he won, his face would ease a little and he’d be mighty nice about your failing. But he’d make you think that anybody should’ve been able to do it. But if he failed, he’d suck his lips in and wrinkle his forehead, still pleasant, but you’d know he was beating himself half to death inside, over his failure. Leave you feeling mighty bad either way. Yeah, Jack had swum ponds until he was sure he could outswim everybody in Maxwell, and now he was doing the same way with other things. You had the feeling every book he read, he read it just to catch up with the author—to know as much—then to know more—
Sam’s words moved on as the old Ford pulled the road out toward Shaky Pond, slowed to cross the branch, churned in the thick sand on the other side, stalled, picked up a smoother stretch of speed. “I always say, get through college and then you’ve got a chance.”
“All I see it did for Non and Bess was ruin them.” Ed said, moving his hand up and down the back of the car seat. “We used to have fun. You remember we did. Now look at them! No life! I say it’s better to be like that little nigger round town, that Dessie somebody, better be like her and her rump-twisting little friends than like my sisters. Those others at least have a laugh left in them.”
“You’re as bad,” he added when Sam had nothing to say.
Sam chuckled. “So damned much sickness. Got me hog-tied, I reckon.”
“What you get out of it! Don’t get money. If you do—you bury it. See you haven’t been to the store.”
“I’ll get around to the shoes one of these days.” Sam drove a mile before he said more. “As for the other, Aunt Easter would say, enough to bread us.”
“Sure! Say they’re all sick—and you make them well Then what you got? Make them well for what?”
Sam made no answer.
“So they can do their work for white folks better, I reckon,” voice quick now, running into Sam’s silence, trying to hurt himself on it. Pleasing Tom Harris and other white men. Ed wanted to believe that—
“It’s what I can do for folks.”
They were moving through the last stretch of hammock before getting to the Talley farm. There was a fine shade here, a good thing to pass through, but neither noticed.
“Don’t get it. You’d think it was a debt you had to spend your whole life paying off!”
“Maybe just the interest on it, boy.”
“Nobody’s done anything for you. Or me either! Why you got to put yourself out like you do? You’re killing yourself. What for? What’s anybody done for us?”
“You’re forgetting your mother.”
“She didn’t send me to college to do for other people. Mama sent us to college to better ourselves. Look at us! Look at Bess and Non! Servant girls! Sometimes I think they like groveling to crackers … sometimes—”
“Bess is trying to help Jack get ahead. You’re not fair to them, are you?”
“That doesn’t explain Non.”
“She has a right to her own way of life.”
“She has no right—” Oh well, what’s the use to keep on! “Sorry, Sam, forget it.”
There was no sound now save the puff and pant of the hot engine.
What makes you say things like that! Hurting him. What’s he done to you! Ed looked at Sam. He didn’t look mad. No, just hot and a little tired, as he stared stodgily ahead at the white glaring road.
Sam was slowing down now at the branch. “Reckon a little water might help her feelings.” Ed was glad to hear the easy voice, to hear nothing in it that was not of the casual words. He picked up the old tomato can, filled the radiator, poured a little over his hot hands, got back in the car.
They plugged on down the road.
“Sam—” Ed laughed a little to make the words come easy. “You know a lot about—things. Way people are. Ever know of anybody, except crazy people, getting a notion in their head they couldn’t get out?”
“Like what, for instance?” Sam said after a half mile of silence.
Ed did not try to say.
Sam looked at him, half smiled. “Like—say, a tune you get in your head that you can’t get out?”
“Something like that, I reckon.” What made you start it? He’ll think you’re nuts.
“Had a few myself. Maybe doctoring’s one,” Sam smiled quickly at his friend.
“No—I tell you,” Ed drew in his breath, hesitated, went on, “I was walking along in the park one day, two or three months ago.” Make a joke of it. He’s likely to think you need a strait-jacket. “There were some ants on a stone. Just plain damn ants, you know. I stopped, and stepped on one, mashed it flat. Just not thinking, see, one way or another particularly. Minute I did it, something flashed through my mind: ‘You killed Nonnie.’ Had no sense to it, see? But it kept coming back in my mind. At first, the thing was so crazy, it didn’t bother me. But it kept coming back … sort of … gets … on your … nerves after a while …”
“People are funny,” Sam said slowly, “way they think their mind is something different from their body. You don’t get nervous when you have a sharp pain in your belly for a second. Goes away. That’s the end of it. Let a little gas pain come in your mind, you keep worrying.”
Yeah … sounds fine. He doesn’t understand it any more than I do.
“Of course it’s damned silly. As I said, at first it didn’t bother; then it began to come back. At night, at work. I’d be in the midst of something. I’d hear it. It’s got so it keeps on—” Ed broke off his words, wiped his face.
“You run into a lot of things with sick folks,” Sam went on. “For instance, folks who make you operate on them.”
“Sure, want a little attention, I reckon.”
That’s different.
“Maybe more than that. Seems sometimes they want you to hurt them. As if they had to suffer. Something they had to do.”
Nobody wants a thing like that. He’s trying to get my mind off of this—
“Better stop here, I reckon,” Sam said. “Old Talley don’t like to see us riding in automobiles. Might as well walk the rest of the way.”
