Strange Fruit, page 23
“Nonnie, are you listening—What’s the matter?”
She shook her head.
“Well, he’ll be here to see you tomorrow. We thought it might keep down talk to get the marriage over before anybody noticed your …”
The ground had tilted, and everything on it—the swamp, the old house, the graveyard, Miss Ada’s, the cedars, a bunch of pink honeysuckle, old cypress, the ridge—swirled around her in slow circles. She caught hold of the fence.
“Knew you’d see it this way. Told Henry you would. He … well, he sort of stands in awe of you. But if he ever—if he dares touch you, you come straight to me … Nonnie, you’ve been … I hate like hell … I—here I almost forgot the damned thing—the money—two hundred—ought to help you through—If you ever need more or get into trouble …”
He held the package out, but Nonnie’s hands were motionless on the picket fence.
“I’m damned sorry—I’d hoped—you’d—”
Nothing in her empty face, nothing in her body pressed hard against the fence could have given him hope.
And suddenly it was as if he had begun to see the thing through her eyes, as always she had been able to make him see. He had begun to see what he could never have borne … “Nonnie! God in heaven, I can’t leave you like this … Listen … we’ll have one more night. Tonight, honey … Listen … Tonight we’ll be like old times, then it’ll be easier … for both of us …” He moved toward her. Between his hands and the white splotch that was Nonnie, a lightning bug darted and was gone. He touched her rigid shoulder, touched her hair, her cheek, dropped his hand quickly.
He laid the money on the fence rail, turned, was gone.
Nonnie stood unmoving at the gate. Stood there, holding to the picket fence, looking across—White Town. Little night creatures flew close to her face, a bat circled her head, plunged down across her, swerved, disappeared in the dark. Far across the fields, beyond the railroad, a car chugged through the heavy sand.
Sharply, plunging two holes through the night, shots rang out. It was as if they had gone through her body, cutting her nerves awake. Now she was hearing every little sound, the whir of every insect. And as if, one by one, every light in a house were switched on, her mind grew clear. Turning she ran into the house.
Bess was kneeling in the hall, bathing little Jackie in the small tin tub. She glanced up when Non came in and stood there before her. “What’s the matter?” Her voice grew sharp before the words were finished as she looked at her sister’s face.
“I don’t know,” Non whispered.
“But what were those shots, Nonnie?”
Nonnie shook her head.
Bess put down the washcloth, left the little naked boy standing in the tub and went up to her sister. She was suddenly furious with her, and frightened. She shook her hard. “Nonnie, you do know.”
Nonnie slid quietly to the floor.
With quick sharp words Bess told Jackie to dry himself. Then she dipped some of his bath water out with her hand and splashed it over Nonnie’s face. There were footsteps on the porch. Turning quickly she saw Eddie standing at the door, as empty-faced as the girl lying beside her knee.
“Well, I’ve done it,” he said, and sucked in his breath with a little nervous laugh.
Bess let Nonnie’s head slip to the floor. She knew with quick nausea that the time had come for whispers. She went to the door. She drew Eddie out of the lamplight to the dark porch.
“Now what have you done?”
“Killed him.”
“Who?”
“Deen.”
“Tracy?”
“Yes.”
Brother and sister stood in the darkness, blur facing blur, breathing heavily.
“Anyone see you?”
“No. Don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know. Anyway, they’d know it was you … I’ve got to get you out of town.” Bess did not hear herself say that.
“I’ll swing a freight.”
“And get caught before you’re halfway to the tracks! Somebody’ll find him. Where—” she found it hard to say.
“Where he dropped. I wouldn’t touch the bastard.”
“But where?”
“Near Miss Ada’s.”
“They’ll find you—they’ll come straight here.” She was shaking all over. Her mind was shut fast. If she could just think, she kept saying to herself, she would know what to do. It was as if all her race’s knowledge of how to escape the hands of white men would offer itself to her, only for the thinking …
An old hound barked. Its shrill cry trickled down her body like ice water. She beat frantically on a door that would not open.
“I don’t give a damn,” Eddie said stubbornly.
“Oh you’re such a fool!” she was hating him, and hating, grew sane. “Sam. If he’s home—he’ll drive you to Macon or—Come on,” she commanded.
“I’ve gotta see Nonnie and explain.”
“Explain your foot! Come—you must go—”
“I can’t leave without—”
Nonnie walked slowly out to them and stood there without speaking.
Bess turned, said quickly, “He’s killed a white man. You know what that means.”
“Tracy?” Nonnie asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Around them the black night pressed with its dead weight of three hundred years. Against that heaviness they had little strength to breathe. To the brother and sister nothing seemed important that moment except to know how Nonnie felt. They waited, each groping toward her through a thick fog of a lifetime of hating and loving and sharing.
“You must go—” she finally said, and the two listening could not find any feeling in her voice.
“Mama,” Jackie piped, and turning, they saw silhouetted against the lamplight the little naked fellow peering through the screen door. “I’ve got to pee-pee.” The simplicity of his need brought the present down with a crash upon them. Fear tore off the inertia which had bound them so strangely.
Bess said, “You’ll have to wait! You can’t do it now. Lord. I’d forgotten him. Come here.” She picked him up, started down the steps. “Come,” she said to the others, and began to run. As suddenly stopped. “Money.” They looked at her blankly.
“How much have you?”
“Don’t know—five, six.”
As if it didn’t matter; as if nothing mattered. Everything left to her! Faint sounds from White Town … “Nonnie, you’ll find my money back of Mama’s picture. Get yours, wherever it is. Hurry, Nonnie!” Nonnie’s running feet to Bess’s straining eyes moved through the night as you run in a nightmare. “Get Jackie’s bank too,” she called.
“No, no,” Jackie screamed, “Nonnie tant hev my pennies.”
“Ssssh, baby, it’s for Uncle Eddie.”
“He tant hev um—he tant,” and Jackie began to kick his way out of Bess’s arms.
“Hush! I’ll whip you!”
“No, no, no!” Jackie screamed in steady crescendo. “He tant hev um, he tant hev um, he tant—”
“Oh God, make him hush—make him—” Bess moaned. “They’ll hear him—”
Eddie suddenly laughed, and at the sound of it Bess began to giggle hysterically.
“I won’t take your pennies, old man, now pipe down.” But now Jackie was too sleepy and uncomfortable to discontinue sobs which had added so strangely to his stature in the family. “I wants to pee-pee—I wants to pee-pee—”
“For God’s sake, Bess, let the fellow down!”
“Run quick behind that bush, Son—”
“You t-tole me n-not to r-run to b-bushes lak a p-puppy—”
“Oh Lord!” Bess hurried with him behind a canna.
Nature and Jackie had come to terms when Nonnie came back, breathing hard from her running.
“How much?”
“I—haven’t—”
“Count it, Non, quick!”
It was nearly twelve dollars in all.
“Won’t take you to Washington, Ed?”
“No.”
They had reached the gate. Nonnie stopped. She pointed to the fence. Unknowing at what she pointed, Bess turned cold, as if all the cottonmouths of civilization were coiled there to strike them …
Non whispered, “There.”
“What?”
“The money.”
Bess followed her gesture, felt along the rail until her fingers found the package. She turned slowly, looked at her sister, but Nonnie had moved away and was walking down the path. “Take the back way to Miss Ada’s, Non,” she called softly.
They left Jackie at Miss Ada’s with few words, knowing that she would accept the child at this hour and unclothed, as simply, without question, as she accepted everything that life brought to her side door.
As they came down the steps of Miss Ada’s brushing close to the old hedge to get to the front path, Bess stopped. If they went out the front way, down Miss Ada’s little bottle-edged path, past the row of cedars, they’d walk by his body. They’d—“We can’t go that way,” she said, and saying it, compulsively she looked toward the place where she knew Ed must have done it. The moon was rising now behind the dark row of tall old trees, it would soon disclose the body as clearly as would daylight. She made herself stop staring at the trees, made herself stop wanting to go there, as she felt compelled now to do, to see this thing close, this trouble that had been in their lives so long with no naming of it by anyone. It was as if something had prowled through the woods close to you ever since you could remember, sometimes just cracking a twig, sometimes crashing hard against a tree, but you had never quite seen it, or been able to name it. And now it lay there before you—dead. Dead. And you wanted, or something deep down in you wanted, to look at it a long time …
She turned quickly, took the back path, which threaded its way through a stretch of dense woods and on to open ground back of the cemetery. They were quickly at Sam’s. The house was dark.
She ran up the steps of the porch, noticed, as she ran, that the others followed her close, as if wanting to stay near her. And something eased in her a little as she saw it. She knocked briskly at the door, feeling now suddenly that maybe she could manage it, this thing that had fallen on them, which until this moment had seemed beyond anything her mind or heart or body could accept.
She knocked again. Within the house she heard a bed squeak, a foot touch the floor heavily. Slow fumbling steps. Aunt Easter. He was out. Sam had gone somewhere … maybe out of town …
She knocked on the door again, banging loudly now in sudden panic.
The door opened. Old Mrs. Easter Perry held a lamp high above her head. She stood there in her long white nightgown and surveyed Bess from head to foot, slowly. “It’s you,” she said. She looked beyond Bess at the other two, back to Bess.
“Yes’m,” Bess said softly. “Where’s Sam? Where’s Sam, Mrs. Perry?”
“He ain’t here.” Her high nose seemed to Bess a barricade against her.
“Where is he, please? I must see him.”
“He ain’t here.” Lips shut tight.
“Where is he, please? It’s important Awfully important.” Bess was now remembering the many times when it had not been important.
“When he gits in, he say he gwine to bed. Up last night wid sick folks. All night. Dey wear him out got no time to be foolin roun wid them what don need him.”
“Aunt Easter,” Bess began to plead now, “this time we need him, if anyone ever did. Tell me, please. I’ll go there.”
“Sam don like fo me to tell folks where he is. Say fo me to make folks leave a message and he’ll—”
“Aunt Easter—there’s no time for us to leave a message. Every minute counts—every—Aunt Easter, we Andersons are in bad trouble.”
Aunt Easter’s black somber eyes widened just enough to include curiosity, and Bess saw it and knew now that she must take the chance.
She drew the old woman just inside the door, whispered, “It’s Ed. He got in trouble tonight with a white man.”
“Go on,” the old woman’s voice pushed her into further confidence.
“White man’s dead.”
Under the brown thin stern face you could see the muscles tighten. She looked at Bess. “He at Sally Mason’s. She having a baby—but hit oughta be here by now. Sam say Sally kin have a baby easier most women take off a nightgown.”
Yes, but it could take hours! Lord God! Bess turned, forgetting to thank Aunt Easter; with the others took the path that led to the north end of Colored Town.
The shack they stopped at had all the lamps the family owned burning. Sally’s sister sat on the porch with Sally’s old grandma and three or four neighbor women. And inside you could hear more women talking. She’d have to take care.
Quietly Bess walked down the path, telling the others to wait beyond the house. Quietly she asked someone to let her speak to Dr. Perry, told them that her little boy was bad off, otherwise she wouldn’t have come just then. “Has,” she found it hard to ask, “has Sally’s baby come yet?”
“No, hit ain come yit.”
“Hit ain comin right when hit come,” Sally’s grandma said.
“Grandma seen the signs,” Sally’s sister giggled, making faint fun of Grandma.
Grandma twisted her dip-stick slowly around her old gums.
Sally was moaning, you could hear her out on the porch. Screaming now, two, three times. No more.
“Ugh,” muttered Sally’s little sister, slim and pine-colored and pert. “Ugh,” she said, and stared out into the night. “I wouldn’t have one for nothing—you couldn’t pay me—”
“Hit ain comin dat easy,” Grandma said. “Sally oughta be hollerin mo. Tole her ma—ain nevah heerd tell no oman not ahollerin mo.”
The door opened and closed. Dr. Perry walked up to Bess.
She looked into his calm face. Always it was the same. You see Sam, speak to him, you quiet down. You don’t know what it is, his being big, strong, patient maybe, sure of himself, seeming always to understand, to know what to do. “Sam,” she said and put her hand on his arm, “Sam—Jackie’s real sick.” She spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Can I speak to you about it? It’s his bowels,” she added, and felt herself begin to cry, as these untrue words about her small son fitted like a key you didn’t know you owned into the door of her self-control.
“Let’s go outside,” Sam said quietly, and walked with her through the group of neighbors. As they started down the steps Sally’s sister stood up, touched his arm. “How’s Sally? Is it—is it?”
Sam said, “The baby’s come. Your mama’s tending it now.”
“Granny,” Sally’s little pert sister said, and began to giggle nervously as she sat down again, “it’s come. The baby’s come.”
“Hit ain come yit,” said Granny, and spat her snuff calmly into the yard. “No baby ain come right less’n her hollers. Why don’t her holler?”
“Because he give her something to keep it from hurtin!” her granddaughter said crossly. She stared out with a tightening of her full lips, as one thin pale hand smoothed her straightened black hair back from her face. “I wouldn’t have one for nothin,” she muttered.
Bess had regained her control and briefly told Sam what had happened. Without glancing in the direction of the two Non just out of view of the people on the shed, Ed a hundred feet farther up the road—Sam said, “Walk on up the road. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
The three walked quickly and waited where there were no houses. Palmettos stretched on the left of them to the swamp and on the right, back to where shacks began again, and on to the ballground. A dim, silver-gray, flat, endless stretch of palmetto and wiregrass in the moonlight, with here and there a cypress or tall pine.
The three stood waiting, each a little apart from the other. You could hear Sam start his car. As the car lights drew near, a gaunt cow slowly rose up in the road and stood looking at it, in her lower lip a big prickly-pear dangling. Sam blew the horn, slowed for her, waited while she walked over to a palmetto clump.
The car stopped. Sam called, “I’m ready, Ed. How about it?”
“O.K.”
Bess said, “Here, Ed, here’s the money.”
Ed put it in his pocket. He took a step toward Non. “Non … I … hope you’ll forgive me—Non … you—”
They watched her as she swallowed and swallowed again in her effort to answer him. Then she took his hand and rubbed it softly with her fingers, suddenly turned away, stood against a tree, her back to the road and them.
“Non,” he sobbed, “you’ve got to understand—you’ve—”
“Ed,” Sam called, “get in the car. You have no time—you—”
“Non, you’ve—”
“Get in that car, you fool!” Bess pulled her brother away and to the car.
The taillight faded down the sand road, the last sound of the car was gone.
“Come, Non,” Bess whispered, and began to walk toward the old Anderson place.
SIXTEEN
Dessie was singing softly when Henry came in, singing the song the white folks sang at the revival tent, and he sat there and let her sing as he tried to remember the evening. But soon he gave up thinking and pulled Dessie’s chair close to his and put his arm around her waist.
She stopped her song.
He sat there fooling with her, exploring her dress with his big hand, and all the time he was uneasily tasting Eddie Anderson’s fist, hearing his, “You damned black nigger!” And like seeing ghosts he began to see Nonnie white, not Negro but white, and he knew with sudden and startling clarity that she would no more marry him than Laura Deen would. He felt dizzy with knowledge and found it sour in his mouth. He drew Dessie to him a little roughly and kissed her; and Dessie, believing it some feminine wile of hers that had provoked this fresh amorousness, happily rubbed up against him like a little frisky heifer in its first heat. “Henry,” she whispered, “I reckon we’ll git married, won’t we?”
