Angels Make Their Hope Here (17 page)

He should never have let the old man talk up his mama. Had Duncan seen the hungry way he’d looked at his missus? Emil Branch fumed internally. He would have to drop his inquiry for the time because he was flustered. He couldn’t escape the mountain child’s reverence for elders. Ah, old Duncan Smoot had pinned back Emil Branch’s ears! His defenses were down.

“I hope don’t nobody else come up here lookin’ for Mr. Wilhelm, a somebody whose mama ain’t from roun’ here,” the sheriff said resignedly as he stood.

“They wouldn’a got so far as this, Emil,” Duncan replied.

“You ain’t meanin’ to kill lawmen, are you Mr. Smoot?”

“You have some pie?” Duncan answered. “Dossie, bring the sheriff some pie,” he commanded. “Wrap up some eggs and a pie for the sheriff’s mama, Dossie! I’ll freshen your coffee, Sheriff Emil. You eat blueberry pie while my wife makes up the basket.” Duncan put the lawman back into his chair with a fatherly slap on his shoulder.

Dossie exited to the henhouse. She hitched up her skirt when she got out of the sight of the men and ran about collecting eggs. She was anxious to have the sheriff gone. Here was the man who had torn her dress! Maybe he had the shawl? Though there was no direct connection between them, there was the fact that he had touched her. She was frightened of him and frightened to consider what may happen if Duncan discovered this. She put the eggs in a basket and wrapped up a blueberry pie from the safe for the sheriff’s mama.

Despite Branch’s great annoyance and his eagerness to leave, he enjoyed the bracing cup of coffee and the pie. Here in the highlands there was a crispness to the air that embellished coffee. Of course “thiefing” the Jamaican beans when they came off canal boats guaranteed a good cup. Highland water is good, too, and good water makes good coffee. And women in the highlands could turn a handful of berries into ambrosia! The sheriff wiped his mouth and bid the women farewell with cordiality and some reluctance. He nodded to Hat, though she never lifted her eyes to his. He inclined his head at Dossie with an impressive show of courtesy.

“Mr. Smoot, thank ye and good day, sir,” Branch said and took the basket for his mama and hitched it to his pommel.

These mountain people—these hideouts—these residents of Russell’s Knob are a jumbled-up people, Emil Branch thought. They’re made up of whatever is thrown together in a pile. They’re the children of amalgamators. They’re the children of whites who won’t stay white and reds who won’t stay red and blacks who won’t stay black. Call them jumbles or hodgepodge people or whatever harsh moniker you can stick onto them. His own mama had come from here amongst them. Thank God his father had whitened him and raised him amongst decent, white folk. Emil Branch realized that he despised the bit of himself that connected him to Russell’s Knob, though he loved his mother. But these mountain people are audacious. They are proud. They are straight-backed fuckers.

The sheriff rode away from Duncan Smoot’s house scratching at himself gently like a man thinking about something pretty. Emil mused lasciviously on Miz Dossie Smoot’s dark black breasts that were likely capped with delightfully darker, puckered nipples. They were sweet on the lips, he was sure. He felt his annoyance rising. She was too young to be married to that old man. “That old nigger acts like a king up in these parts—these old backward hollows where no sane white man would come,” Emil fussed to his horse.

Emil Branch had always lived as a white, though he knew his mama was not a white woman. She was pale skinned and had come down out of the mountains to marry a lowlander white man she loved. But Duncan Smoot had pissed him. Calling up his mama’s name and saying her maiden name with a kind of possessiveness that suggested the man had known his mother very well. How dare he! But Duncan Smoot had
dared—he had dared to impugn her whiteness. How dare he suggest that his mama was other than she’d been living! His mama had not denied her home. She had simply left.

Emil Branch rode back to Paterson musing on his mama. She was never completely at a remove from her mountain beginnings, and she had sneaked and taught her son some of the ways. Running in her shadow most of the day in his earliest years, he’d learned his mountain manners. Over the years he’d become merely dutiful to the thickset, ivory-colored woman whose straight, black, ropey hair now had wisps of gray flecked throughout. Yes, she was still a very lovely woman to gaze on, though he did not see her often. Emil knew that she would raise her apron to wipe something moist from her hands at first sight of him. Her hands were always in something damp, and she always liked to dry them before touching him.

She was glad to see him and had moist hands that she dried as he approached. She took Miz Dossie Smoot’s basket happily. She was surprised and a little thrilled to know he’d gone a mountain to speak with her People.

“Miz Smoot. Ma’am,” Emil Branch called out when he came up behind Dossie on the next market day. Hat thought she ought to appear busy so as to seem neither concerned for her son’s whereabouts nor cognizant of her husband’s. So Hat and Dossie had set up as usual in their accustomed place. Dossie had her back to the pathway that wound behind the market area. She started at the sheriff’s voice and turned quickly and had a momentary look of alarm. She lowered her eyes as soon as she saw Emil Branch’s face. She replied in a friendly voice, “How do, Sheriff.”

“Miz Smoot, I know you’ll never call me ought but sheriff. But just know that my name is Emil to my friends,” he said in a self-assured manner that was like Jan’s. It was because of this similar tone that Dossie felt compelled to answer, “How you do, Sheriff Emil?” Oh, she caught up her own breath and held it. She hadn’t meant to use his name. No matter that he’d asked her to. She had not meant to cross over the line and call him by his call. She halted and stepped back and looked again at her shoe tops. It was wrong for her to have said his call name and have it tossing around in her head. She wanted to shrink and go back to her duties.

Emil Branch advanced on Dossie and lifted the market basket. He’d seen the cringing look before. In fact, it was the look he got from all the colored except the tough old birds like Duncan Smoot or the arrogant cocks like Jan Smoot and Petrus Wilhelm. Emil Branch suddenly wanted to stand up close enough to smell Miz Dossie Smoot’s body and think of touching it and then be able to recollect the smell and the touching picture for later on. He’d felt her in his grip once! It was delicious to think of it. He hadn’t meant to tear her sleeve. It was accidental, but it was a beautiful, erotic serendipity! The sound of the cloth ripping and the shocked, frightened look on her face had given him a bone. Hadn’t been for the brawl he’d have taken her in the alley right then. And, he realized, he wanted her to know it.

“Mama was truly thankful for your eggs, Miz Smoot.” The sheriff caught sight of Mrs. Wilhelm, who looked up when she heard his voice. Her eyes did not fall to her shoes. She looked straight at him, then looked away toward the middle distance. She did not confront him, but she did not cower. Her placid stare was like her brother’s and it acted as a caution.

“My mama wondered if you might ’low her to buy from you. If you would be kind and put aside a basket of your eggs, I will
come on market day and fetch them for her.” He again used his pleasant, reassuring voice.

“Sir, I be happy to.” Dossie then took the basket, lined it with straw, and asked, “How many, sir?”

“She says ten—one for each day and three for a cake on Sunday.” He laughed and again called Hat’s attention.

“She would best take a dozen, sir, to be sure,” Dossie said, a bit overproud of her counting and reading skills and her cleverness in commerce.

She placed twelve eggs in the basket and handed it to the sheriff. He touched his hat brim and lay ten cents onto the crate that she stood near. “Good day, Miz Smoot. Good day, Miz Wilhelm,” he said and took leave.

At the following market day, Emil Branch did appear again with a basket to buy eggs for his mama. He was friendly. He was deferential to Hat and excessively polite toward Sally. His true attention was, without doubt, focused on Dossie.

“How is Mr. Smoot, ma’am?” he asked, to draw her into a converse.

But it was Hat who broke in on his plan by answering. “He is very well, sir,” she said.

Emil Branch touched his hat brim with politeness. He put his dime on the crate when given his eggs, but he did allow his finger to brush one of Dossie’s when the basket passed between them. Did she flinch at his touch? He couldn’t be sure if it was not just simple surprise that he had breached etiquette.

The sheriff noticed a change on the next market day. Miz Smoot and Miz Wilhelm and the young girl, Sally Vander, were accompanied by Jan Smoot. Though the young man appeared to be lounging idly at the wagon, he was watching his uncle’s wife like a guard dog. Emil Branch got tense with
resentment and thought that Jan Smoot was a haughty, jumbled-up cur with tawny skin and curly hair in need of bear grease to press it down.

He was cordial to the women and pretended to ignore that Jan was looking at him. But Jan was not deferring to him. It was that mountain pride that gave Jan Smoot the stuffing to act like a white man in the town.
He figures he’s a different kind a nigger and the rules don’t apply to him!
Branch mused to himself.

In Jan’s presence, Emil Branch did not even smile at Dossie, and she did not smile at him. She only accepted the basket, counted out the eggs, nestled them safely, and handed the basket back to him. Her fingers slipped away from the basket quickly so that he could not touch them. The sheriff walked off with only a slight inclination of his head, then caught the sideways glance of Jan Smoot. He turned back to Dossie and spoke loudly. “Ma’am, my mama credits your good eggs for building her vigor. She misses the clean air of the highlands, she says. I’ll come again if you don’t mind. I will take your eggs to her.” He spoke ceremoniously, with an excess of courtliness that startled Dossie and pissed Jan.

“Oh, yes, sir,” Dossie replied as if she were afraid of his displeasure, and he was encouraged by a spontaneous courtesy.

“Until next week then, ma’am,” he said and tipped his hat again.

Dossie allowed a small expression on her lips—a small jot of courtesy. Did she want his attention, he wondered. It would be much easier to seduce her if she actually did, but not requisite. He was as easily aroused by reluctance and fear in women as by willingness.

“T
HE
G
RANDMOTHERS SAY THAT
when you get your sweet soul’s delight—your one special jot of luck—it is a dossie.” Hat spoke and used her hands in a movement that seemed like throwing a powder into the air. “A dossie,” she said while flinging her fingers apart. “A dossie is an ember in the hearth that snaps and pops in among the flames and, though small, keeps the fire roaring. It’s a small, brown bird that answers your hunger. A dossie is a precious thing—a small found luck. When a man in Russell’s Knob considers himself lucky, he says he has a dossie in his pocket.” Hat smiled girlishly.

“True?” Dossie asked in genuine wonderment. “How you think my Ooma knows this? She’s been nowhere near to here.”

Hat stood and cupped each elbow in the palm of her hands crosswise her chest in her stance for the serious consideration of facts.

“Well, the Grandmothers know it all. Maybe Grandmother came to her in a dream and gave her the name. We are pleased to have you. You are a found luck for the Smoots,” Hat said and smiled with satisfaction.

Dossie. She recalled that she’d been stopped in her tracks—mired in her thoughts. She puzzled. Had Grandmother called on her Ooma in a dream? Bil and Ooma had never said a thing
about Grandmother that she could recall. Can Grandmother know about them and guide them and them not know it? She’d wanted to ask Hat,
Who is Grandmother? Is there a way to know her when you see her?

Instead she asked, “Ma’am, what is a gal’s good luck called?”

“Ah,” Hat answered. “It can also be a dossie, of course. But a good woman wants a nest, a comfort. She wants to have her children and make a nice home and build up her people. So she dresses her hair and plumps up her tits and swishes and sways about and smiles and waits patiently and, if she makes a good, sturdy weir, a pretty skimmer fish will get caught in it.” Hat chuckled and squeezed Dossie’s jaws. “A woman’s luck then is called a jimmer. You hear Honey Vander call her husband Jimmer? His given name is William.” Again Hat used her pretty hands to illustrate. She held them one atop the other and moved them over her lower self like a fat, old man coming to the dinner table.

D
OSSIE RECOLLECTED THE PRETTY
story that Hat had told on that day so long back. Hat had used her hands to point up a tale of luck and the Grandmothers and all such other fanciful nonsense. A dossie! Was she the lucky one or the one who brought luck for someone else? Why hadn’t she got a jimmer then? Why couldn’t she get a fulfillment? Were the gods of all the other people so dead set against the Smoots that they worked against them thriving? Was she making herself worried unnecessarily?

Jan drew in his breath and spoke into Dossie’s breasts as if he were unable to raise his eyes to her face. “Please don’t make me do this ’cause I won’t be able to stop it if you ask. An’ I won’t be able to stop even if I hear you ask and know you mean it. I’ll keep on anyway,” he said. “You better be sure. No squealing about force later on. You better stop me now!”

Dossie did not, of course. She had taken off her bodice and shown him what he’d come to see. She made his life complete with her hardheaded plans.

The puzzling thing that made Jan dizzy, made him aroused, made him ashamed, was that all of the shuffling and sorting and pulling together amongst the Smoots was pushing him out of their circle, and Dossie was the root cause of all the
shuffling. And now she wanted a fulfillment. She wanted him to complete her dream. All he wanted was Dossie, wanted to fill her like a Christmas stocking, wanted to eat her like a cake!

He confronted her in the chicken yard. He came to stand before her and block her path. He moved in front of her and seemed to be pulling her into a dance. He stood the ground and would not be avoided. She was surprised at how wide Jan was. She thought of him as tall and slender like Duncan. But here he was taking up the width of the yard. When she turned away and walked into the chicken house, Jan followed.

“What the matter, girl? You sick? You sorrowful for what?” he asked.

“Watch yourself, Brother. I’m not your young sister no more. I’m a married woman, and I got a woman’s troubles,” Dossie answered.

“I s’pose if you wasn’t married you’d be pleased to have your troubles,” Jan said knowingly. He brought back a feeling of camaraderie and reminded Dossie with his tone that they were friends and cousins.

“I want it so bad!” she said with a frustrated belch that filled the chicken house with a sour scent. “Is a child. I want to give him my baby. Is the only gift I can give him. He’s got everything else. I am tryin’, Jan.” Dossie turned to face him and spoke as if they were continuing a previous confabulation.

“I do everything he want me to do to please him. I do everything that Miz Sienna says. She has a yard full of children. She ought to know.” Dossie’s unhappiness spilled out suddenly like milk overturned and running off the edge of a table.

“I done all,” she continued. “I feed myself secret teas and I rest myself like she said. She say that soon as the first one comes
I won’t be able to stop them.” Dossie chuckled and swiped her face. “I touched her bed for luck, Jan,” she said as she turned her face up to his.

“I want to fix myself to be like other women. If a man whispers in their ear, they are all filled up with a child! How come not for me, Jan? I am wishin’ and prayin’ for a fulfillment. I want my baby so bad. It’s like a hive of bees in my head. I am always thinkin’ and hopin’.” Dossie moved among the chickens and seemed ready to kick at them.

“Noelle would say you must fool the ancestors. You must act like you don’t care if you’re fulfilled. She says they want to surprise you with your dreams, to take you unawares. So don’t beg ’em,” Jan said in the damnably contrary and mysterious way he shared with Noelle. He pinched Dossie’s cheek. It was the same advice that Duncan gave.

“Aye, but she don’t have a baby herself,” Dossie came back, then regretted her snappish words when she saw Jan’s smile fade a bit.

“That ought to tell you something.”

“Aye?”

“She don’t want a child. She’s got all the child she wanted with me,” Jan answered good-naturedly.

“Miz Sienna said to hold my knees up after and let his seeds take they time to find a comfortable place. Hat says that, too. But Duncan…” Dossie stopped talking when she saw Jan’s eyes get very large with discomfort.

“Why won’t Noelle take me to see the old women healers? Hat says they could be a help with a woman’s concerns, but it takes an anointed woman to carry you there. Noelle act like she don’t want me to go. She still dislike me because Duncan
married me? Is not my fault,” Dossie said. She looked at Jan with the disingenuous, self-satisfied look of a successfully seductive girl. “Is nothing you can do to make my case with Noelle?” she appealed.

Jan was ashamed to know what he knew, and so he thought he ought to do whatever was wanted to help Dossie. An’ Hat ought to know it and tell her. But she believed only what she cared to about her brother. Jan knew it for a fact. Jan fought inside himself to know whether it was his naked want or his feeling for fairness that agitated him. Didn’t Dossie deserve to know? Would Duncan give Dossie the truth and risk making her disappointed with him? Had Duncan got the balls to tell her about himself? Not likely. Jan wished he could be happy that Uncle had failed at some big thing at last. But he couldn’t be pleased to see Dossie torn up. He loved her so much. He wanted her to be completely happy.

And then he decided to tell her.

“He can’t do it? What you mean, Jan?” Dossie asked.

“He ain’t got what it takes,” Jan said.

“He does, too!” she retorted.

Jan got pissed then that Dossie didn’t understand. “I mean I think you can fuck him until you turn green with wear and you’ll never make a baby with him. It is hopeless, girl.”

“What you sayin’? You know this is true?”

“His seeds are bad. He is without the proper pepper,” Jan said with a fiendish chuckle. Dossie raised her hand and slapped him on his impudent jaw for the insult to her husband.

“He didn’t tell you?” Jan accepted her slap, held on to her hand, and kissed it. “Of course, he wouldn’t tell his pretty prize a thing like that.” Jan’s unruly feelings took a meaner turn. “I
mean, of course a man knows things like this even if his gal don’t. Uncle’ll do anything not to seem less a man in your eyes. He knows his sauces are no good for making babies. But you’ll get a baby eventually if you’re naughty or if you take somebody’s baby from under a bush. Or you can raise a baby whose mama got killed like Noelle did.”

Dossie sucked in her wind in absolute bewilderment at Jan’s words. She hadn’t considered this. That there was this flaw, a failing? Duncan Smoot was without flaw in her mind so that her reaction was to disbelieve. But it confirmed a suspicion of her own and it explained what Hat and Noelle had whispered about. There were also whispers that Nancy Siscoe had uttered at the nuptials. When you come to understand and acknowledge a thing that changes the course of your life in your mind’s eye, you are left standing stiff with an open mouth.

“They coulda told me. They raised me,” she bleated.

“Noelle don’t give up Uncle’s secrets, and An’ Hat’s his sister. She tries to act like she don’t believe it. It was for him to tell you, little girl. You know that. It’s on account of a fever Uncle had when he came back from the mines. It left his seeds flat, though he is still much a man. He has even been to a doctor in town.” Jan’s voice began to soften. All trace of taunting was gone. “I used to dream Noelle would bring up a baby with Uncle and settle down and we all could be one little family together. I think Noelle dreamed it, too.”

“All of you know it, but you don’t tell me.” Dossie sounded folded in and greatly peeved. Sulking about it made her feel small and sadder still, for she knew she was a lucky woman. She had some ease from drudgery, and her husband was attentive. But now that she knew he couldn’t do it, she felt a crushing
sense of ruined hope and a crushing responsibility to keep it secret. She couldn’t give up her husband’s secret. She must, at least, do as well as Noelle had done. She wanted to give Duncan a gift of legacy, to build a line and fill her porch with her loving accomplishments. Now she knew she would be a childless, pitiful, secretive creature!

And they all knew it! Did they laugh? Perhaps Noelle did… and Nancy Siscoe.

Jan’s peeved tone and acid words cut in on her reverie. “He has spoiled you. What makes you think loving him and marrying him would mean you was supposed to have it all the way you wanted? You still think he is a god and you’re going to be God’s wife? You want to be the mother of all God’s children?”

“Once even Noelle said it was my destiny,” Dossie said. She fingered the ties on her bodice.

“Well, she was drunk and so are you.” Jan laughed loud enough to flush birds from the trees.

Indeed Dossie was drunk with it now, her plan, her strategy. She wanted to be Duncan’s child’s mother—the one wonderful thing he couldn’t do for himself. She sat with Jan on the porch until it was no longer possible to see.

“You give me a gift, Jan,” Dossie said bluntly from out of the dark.

“Must I buy it or steal it or kill it for you? What gift you want?”

“You the only one who can do it.” The words were so completely the ones Jan would have chosen for Dossie to say that he became frightened his senses were gone off. “He will think he did it,” Dossie said.

“Why you don’t ask Pet to do you this favor?” he replied. “He’s proven.” Dossie said nothing. “Ah, but you’re thinkin’ I
look like him. I’m a sure thing. You pretty hardheaded about your big plan.”

“Yes,” Dossie said with deadly quiet vehemence.

“You willin’ to lie baldly and keep up lying until you die?” Jan asked her.

“Yes,” she declared.

“Fair is fair. He never told you about being sick and unable,” Jan said, testing all of her sores. “So you got a right to lie to him.” Jan finished in a perversely amiable way that worried Dossie. “He knows he can’t do it, little girl,” he said, calling her “little girl” now to keep her his baby sis for the moment. Oh, but she was a woman he wanted to fuck with every inch of himself—to know his jasper had disappeared all the way into her. She caused him a furious itch in his leathers, and he was sure he had a baby for her. But did he dare do this to her and himself? She was such a curious one. She pretended to have a wide-eyed innocence of everything, yet she was bold enough to think up a scheme to get him to make her a baby.

She don’t give a fig for the damage it’ll do to my soul,
Jan mused. Her and Noelle were troublesome women. It was just Uncle’s bad luck that he’d got them both. Too bad Uncle’s little dossie had a will and a destiny of her own.

Jan decided he would do it. Even so he knew it was not the right thing to do. To love Dossie was to pull from Uncle. That couldn’t be avoided. To choose Uncle over her was to betray her hopes and would be as if he loved her less. And he did not love her less.

And how did they know for certain that she was not Jan’s true destiny instead of Uncle’s? After all, if it was a Smoot augury, then it could be as easily his destiny. He was a Smoot, too.

And Dossie seemed unconcerned with sinning as long as she
got her prize. She was so damnably self-righteous in this thing. Women think fucking is easy for men, because men are always liking to do it and want to keep at it. It ain’t so easy. And women think easy is casual anyway, but it ain’t casual either all the time. Him fucking her to make a child for Uncle could be a grand plan, but it could be a mess. Jan knew that. Duncan fucking Gin Barlow’s daughter had become a mess that had ended all chances that Noelle would take up housekeeping with Duncan. The old man had forced Jan to lie about it and keep on lying to Noelle. It was a cruelty done to a small boy who loved the woman he was betraying. So the old man was due for comeuppance—for a lie or two in the service of somebody else.

“You give me the baby, Jan, and I’ll make him believe it is a miracle. You do your part and I will make him believe it. I’m younger than Noelle,” Dossie said carefully, not wanting to rouse Jan’s defenses again. “I’m more constant than any of his other gals. I was meant for him. He says I’m a wood witch or a conjurer because I make him love me. I’ll make him believe I am a wood witch. Duncan says a wood witch is a pretty thing that comes out of a forest to snare a man.” Dossie snorted a little, intimate laugh.

“Is he chucking your chin and kissing your neck when he says this?” Jan asked impishly, with some spite for her self-satisfaction. Dossie wondered that he knew his uncle’s manner so well.

“A wood witch looks like a doe with plump sides or a rabbit the size of a dog. Sometimes she appears like a pretty, pretty woman and she will make a man think the sun rises and sets on her face,” Dossie came back at him in a string of words that he knew to be Uncle’s own.

“In that case Uncle is right,” Jan answered seriously. “There is a wood witch operatin’ hereabouts.”

“I’ll make him believe I succeed where other women fell down,” Dossie said with a startling tone of confidence and manipulation. And there wouldn’t be a sin if she was not taking pleasure. Certainly it would be like putting the bull with the cow. Dossie resolved to cultivate thoughts to drive out any others. She decided not to say so to Jan because he might be mad if he knew that.

“You got the stuffing?” Jan asked sharply.

“Yes.”

“Is’t all for Uncle then? No itch to be naughty? No care for anybody else? No small corner in your heart for this dog, Dossie Blossom? Girl, it will take a time or two,” Jan said. “You got the stomach to keep doin’ it and foolin’ him all the while? We got to do it when he is aroun’, not when he’s gone off, you know. He is got to think it could be him.”

“Yes. I can do it,” Dossie said.

“All right. You don’ have to love me any, little sis. I love you. I want you to be happy. One of us got to be in love, though, if you want your baby to be beautiful. I’ll love enough for us both.” They exchanged smiles, and Jan left Dossie on Uncle’s porch where she belonged.

Ah, Dossie smelled so good—so desirable. Jan thought of her as a soup of flower smells. Uncle was coddling her. He was keeping her in comfort like a good wife should be kept. Even her common, everyday dress was clean and fragrant. She didn’t smell like no stable whore like Charity. What would happen to her if he took her away from Uncle? He knew he ought to do this thing to make her happy, to simply give her his gift. But what all would be let loose if he did?