Gathering of Waters (9 page)

Even the moments before that moment, which found her standing in the middle of the road staring longingly at the Mingo Bailey’s retreating back, were hazy. What was bright in her mind was leaving home that morning headed to the Payne house to deliver johnnycakes. The next fresh memory was slipping behind the tree. She was sure that somewhere between the Payne house and the immediate moment she had consumed coffee, because it was swishing loudly in her stomach. She asked herself,
Why in the world would I drink coffee when I abhor the taste of it?

Doll gave her head a hard shake, praying that the movement would retrieve the lost hours, but all it did was free a memory that Doll could only fathom as a dream.

In that dream, Mingo was headed to town with a pair of loaded dice in one pocket and two dollars in change in the other. His mind was so fixed on the money he intended to cheat his way into winning, that he barely noticed Doll waving at him from across the road.

“Mingo? Mingo Bailey?”

“Ma’am?”

“Can you help me to the bridge with these oranges? They’re heavier than I expected.”

Mingo looked toward the center of town and then back at Doll.

“Just to the bridge,” she reiterated.

“Okay.”

She hummed as they walked, and greeted passersby with bright, sunny hellos. When the humming stopped she raised her hand to her throat and began to stroke it.

At the bridge, Doll looked around and saw that there wasn’t a soul in sight.

“Mingo?” she said in a voice far away from the one that had beckoned him from across the road.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Would you like to have me?”

“Ma’am?”

“Have me. You know, the way you’ve had so many other women.”

“Ma’am?”

“Fuck me. Do you want to fuck me, Mingo?”

He looked across the bridge toward Nigger Row. “I must be losing my goddamn mind,” he muttered with a laugh.

“No, you’re not,” Doll assured, and pressed her hand against his crotch.

Beneath the bridge, on the Candle Street side, Doll became an animal; a spitting, scratching wildcat that Mingo struggled to gain control of. Above them, the sounds of shod feet, bicycles, and the clomping of hooves and the rolling wheels of buggies masked the sound of their lovemaking.

“Our Father, who art in heaven—” Doll croaked as Mingo pounded into her.

“Stop that!” he warned.

“Hallowed be Thine name …”

Mingo closed his hand over her mouth.

After he was done with her—wait, I think the correct thing to say here is: After
she
was done with
him
— Mingo patted Doll on her ass and said, “Fix yourself up, you look a mess.”

She hadn’t taken offense when Mingo pressed his filthy hand over her mouth, but for some reason the pat to her bottom struck her as impolite and disrespectful.

“How dare you,” she hissed, and then struck him hard across his face. “Don’t you know that I am the wife of a reverend?”

The assault took Mingo by surprise. His hand curled into a ball. “W-woman,” he stammered between clenched teeth as he patted the damp soil in search of his cigarette. When he found it, he slipped it between his lips and began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

“What’s so funny?” Doll asked.

He didn’t answer her question, he just kept laughing, even as he tugged his trousers up around his waist.

August was sitting in the living room when Doll walked into the house covered in mud. At the sight of her, he sat straight up and his face went bright with alarm.

“Doll, what happened to you?” he asked as he stood and moved toward her.

Doll looked stupidly down at her soiled clothing. “I think I fell down the river bank.”

August frowned. “You think?”

“I did,” Doll mumbled. “I slipped down the river bank.”

“My goodness!” August declared as he took Doll gently by the elbow and guided her up the stairs. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why were you walking so close to the edge?”

Doll tried her best to remember, but couldn’t. “I lost the oranges,” she whispered. “The bag broke and they tumbled into river and I went after them.”

“You went after them? Oranges? You went after some stupid ole oranges?”

Doll nodded ashamedly.

August snaked his arm protectively around her waist. “Thank God it was the oranges that rolled into the river and not you.”

Chapter Fifteen

B
y April of 1927, most folk in Mississippi couldn’t think of anything but rain, mud, mosquitoes, and flooding.

Not a drop of rain had fallen between May and July of 1926, but on the first day of August the skies opened up and remained that way for a very long time.

Bullet rain. Bucket rain. Rain as soft as rose petals. Mist.

You’d think that so much water would have washed the stench of sin right out of the air, but it didn’t. The water infused it, transforming it into an invisible vapor that hung in the air like fog.

Sin was what was on August’s mind when he shrugged on his gray slicker and shoved his Bible into one of the oversized pockets. Retrieving an umbrella from the stand in the small vestibule, he opened the door and stepped out into the downpour.

It was Good Friday and he was headed to the church a few hours early to go over his sermon. It gave him no pleasure to be thinking about sin on one of the most blessed days of the Christian calendar, but try as he might, he could not shake the troubling thoughts, nor could he decide if the sin had ushered in the rain or the rain had made way for the sin. Whatever the case, both the sin and the rain were there—growing mightier with each gray, wet day.

Weeks earlier, one parishioner after the next had approached him with: “Reverend, could I have a word, please?”

August listened quietly and intently as the men confessed to gambling, drinking, and fornicating. The women’s offenses were light in nature compared to their male counterparts. Their transgressions involved gossiping and coveting. August prescribed scripture and prayer and sent them on their way.

But he soon realized that sin hadn’t infected just his community; it was wreaking havoc all across the state. Every new day brought another horrendous report of evildoing:

William N. Coffey, aged 48, confessed he’d murdered his
bigamous bride, Hattie Hale Coffey, clubbing her to death
with a baseball bat and then tossing her into the Mississippi
River.

In the town of Alligator, plantation owner V.H. McCraney
shot and killed plantation owner C.G. Callicott and then
put the pistol to his head and blew his brains all over the
face of the wide-eyed witness, Richard Moore.

M
ISSISSIPPI
L
EADS IN
N
EGRO
L
YNCHINGS
…

Yes, sin was everywhere. It had even breached the sanctity of his own home.

At the church, August removed the skeleton key from his pocket, shoved it into the lock, and turned. Once inside, he loaded the pot-bellied stove with wood and paper and tossed in a lit match. As he stood watching the flames swell and flicker, his mind wandered to his wife and the bite mark on her thigh.

He’d noticed it weeks earlier as she lay sleeping. Sometime during the night, her restless tossing and turning had caused her gown to roll up and around her waist. The warm and humid day had ushered in an equally uncomfortable evening, so the blanket was left folded at the foot of the bed and husband and wife slept uncovered.

The morning August realized that sin had taken up residence in his home was a morning similar to the thousand others that preceded it. August had risen early, swung his legs over the side of the bed, stretched his arms high above his head, and yawned.

As always, he took a moment to admire his beautiful sleeping wife, and that’s when he spotted the bite, which he first took as a bruise.

On closer inspection, August could plainly see the teeth marks in her flesh, and his heart dropped out of his chest. Some man, some heathen, had placed his mouth so close to

— August stopped the thought barreling down on him.

How could she? Why would she?

Doll had not allowed him to make love to her in
that
way
for months. She had even prohibited the normal coupling that occurred between man and wife. After a while, August had been forced to pleasure himself in the solitary darkness of the outhouse.

Now it was all clear to him: she had taken a lover.

Adulteress!

The word alone was kindle for fury.

No one would have faulted August if he had snatched Doll up by the throat and choked the breath out of her.

But not August. He did what he always did when it came to Doll’s misgivings—he turned her sin onto himself and absorbed like a sponge. He convinced himself that he had allowed his church and his flock to take precedence over his wife. The result of which were feelings of neglect within Doll. She in turn had sought attention elsewhere, and had stumbled into the arms of a heathen who plied her with sweet lies all in the name of pilfering her pyramid.

He had only himself to blame.

August exited the bedroom on legs made of jelly. He thought he might vomit and rushed to the outhouse. Standing in the darkness, he waited patiently for the surge, but it did not come. What did emerge were tears accompanied by a howl so loud and sorrowful that it woke Hemmingway from her slumber.

The door of the church opened and closed. August turned around to find one of his parishioners stepping in.

“Morning, Sister Betty.”

“Morning, Reverend.” Sister Betty’s response was cheerful. “Happy Good Friday to you!”

August smiled. “And the same to you.”

Sister Betty removed her coat and gave it two good shakes, sending droplets of water through the air. “I know you ain’t s’pose to question God, but I gotta ask why in the world he sending down all this rain!” She chuckled as she moved to August’s side and floated her hands over the stove. “Ooh, nice and toasty,” she moaned.

August excused himself. He went to the small windowless room located at the back of the church. Once inside, he lit a candle, sat down at his desk, opened the drawer, and removed six pages of notes.

He’d been working on the sermon for nearly two weeks, but now, as he scanned the paragraphs, none of it read familiar. It was as if some other man had written the words. A man consumed with grief and riddled with self-pity.

You ask,
Did he question Doll about the love-bite?
No. Not one word was uttered. August buried it, alongside his pride.

Hurt is a growing thing. August’s hurt took root and sprouted vines that coiled around his heart and stomach. Chest pains and a severely decreased appetite left him shaky and thin.

Hemmingway had asked, “Daddy, you feeling okay?”

August had nodded, forced a smile, and nodded again.

Doll didn’t seem to notice that her husband was disintegrating right before her very eyes. If she did, well, Esther didn’t allow her to give a good goddamn. And by this point in the story you should be well aware that Esther’s devotion to anyone other than herself was as shallow as a saucer.

August read and reread the paragraphs; drew thick lines through sentences and scribbled notes in the margins, all the while aware of the sound of the rain beating down on the roof as loud and resolute as an army of men marching off to war.

On Candle Street, Cole was preparing to send his wife off to attend the wedding of a family member in New Orleans. Melinda was upset that Cole could not join her.

“You won’t be alone,” Cole reminded her. “Caress will be with you.”

“But I don’t know if I’m up for such a long trip.”

Cole’s jaw clenched in frustration. “Now, now, Lindy, you know the doctor gave you a clean bill of health.”

Melinda glanced out the window. “But the rain …”

“It’ll be nice and dry on the train.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I have to be here to receive the shipment; after that, I’m on the next train to New Orleans.”

Outside, Caress was seated alongside the driver on the bench of the carriage. Her arm was going numb from holding the wide black umbrella over her head.

Cole walked Melinda to the carriage, opened the door, and helped her inside. He planted a soft kiss on her cheek.

“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be there before you know it.”

Cole pushed the door closed and signaled to the driver, who snapped the reigns. The horses began to gallop.

It wasn’t until Mingo was spotted streaking up the middle of the road with his shoulders hunched up against the downpour that people realized he hadn’t been seen for days.

He was running so hard, he almost ran smack into the pair of horses that pulled the carriage carrying Melinda and Caress.

“Fool, watch where you’re going!” the driver yelled.

Mingo darted toward the bridge and would have collided with Doll if she had not stepped quickly out of his path. Seeing her, Mingo came to a screeching halt. “Mrs. Reverend, ma’am!”

Doll, whose head was tied in a yellow scarf that did nothing to protect her hair from the rain, whirled around and almost dropped the stack of records she had tucked beneath her arm. She looked at Mingo, but no recognition registered in her eyes. She offered him a polite smile and continued on her way.

Mingo watched her dodge raindrops down Candle Street before disappearing around the side of one of the houses.

He scratched his chin in bewilderment, then tugged the collar of his shirt around his neck and took shelter beneath a nearby tree. He eased himself down onto his hunches and fixed his gaze on the slate sky. He remained that way until Sam T. happened upon him.

“Hey, what you doing?”

“Huh?” Mingo blinked water from his eyes until Sam T. came into focus.

Sam T. was lean and freckled, with a mass of reddishbrown hair that he wore parted down the middle.

“You okay, Mingo?”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.”

“Man, you gonna catch your death out here in the rain without a coat. Where’s your coat?”