Holding Pattern (25 page)

In one corner of the cemetery, the F. family plot is surrounded by a low concrete wall with the family name chiseled on limestone carved in the form of a columned Greek arch, three to four feet in height. F. and his wife are buried inside parallel tombs, their place of final resting memorialized by two marble plates, each six feet in length and four in width, surfaces almost metallic in the sun. Trees cast a black mass of shadow over the graves, a jutting peninsula in the shape of a black branch, jagged leaves like toothy-edged archipelagos. I’d heard that the cemetery keeps a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey at the plot for visitors so that they can take a sip in F.’s honor, as a libation of sorts. I see the remnants of a bottle, a handful of knuckle-sized chunks of glass and square fragments with weather-faded labels. F.’s dog has earned burial rights in a parallel plot:

I set the camera’s self-timer and kneel beside the Greek arch.

I had hoped to visit the Heritage Museum, which has a collection of more than fifty battle flags, but then I learn that the flags are too fragile to be displayed. I turn down an invitation to attend church and on aimless feet head out of town on one of the main roads. A cat lies sprawled in a ditch, its pink tongue curling stiffly to the ground, stretched like bubble gum. Just a ways up, a priest stands on the wide cement walk outside his church—a modern structure with a sleek frame, airy doors and windows, a roof boldly tinted like the blood of Sacrament, and a cross carved with an artist’s keen and distinctive touch—and fellowships with wafer-skinned members of his parish. Smiling, talking, laughing, shaking hands, patting backs, kissing babies, and pinching cheeks. His skin is a shade or two lighter than his black cloak. (Black absorbs everything, even cast-off sin.) He seems much older than his parishioners, well-groomed go-getters in their twenties and thirties who sport designer clothes and drive luxury cars. (The parking lot jammed full.) He is balding, the last of his hair putting up a good fight, a tight black band clinging to the back and sides of his head, a bat with wings clamped. His jaw is lined and twisted, head screwed into his white collar. (White repels. May starched collar keep the devil away from soft throat.) And the expression on his face is by turns sympathetic, pensive, and joyful. In ear distance, I can just make out the words “We can kneel down together or alone anytime, anywhere, and ask for God’s help.”

I want to say something to knock the wind out of him. Does he whiff toe jam at the foot of the cross? Does Lazarus have nightmares about the shunned grave? I bite my tongue. Men are made from the earth and shall return to it. No match for Holy Ghost power.

I concentrate on my footwork, leather rhythm. (During the Civil War, popular consciousness developed a theory to explain the tremendous endurance of men in battle. Called the theory of the conversion of force, it postulated that every shock was absorbed into the body and stored in the form of energy.) Clean-framed homes with aluminum siding give way to weeded lots spotted with rusty metal milk cans like hollowed-out bombshells, hitching posts covered in ghostly mold, shriveled-up sheds sinking into the earth. Long-abandoned antebellum dwellings decaying there, wood indented with the tooth marks of storms. Lumber exploding out at wild angles. Rooms sheared away. Porch and plank constricted in snakelike brambles. Unhinged trellises curling away from structure like suspended high-wire acrobats. Architectural achievements reduced to antiquated puzzles of oak and timber.

Sun straggles—yellow, then red—across the sky. Trees hold their formation, kudzu laced through trunks and leaves. At one point I must appear lost, a dark fugitive, because a white man pulls his car over to the graveled shoulder, steps out of it, and asks if I need assistance. No, I tell him. He offers me a ride. I like to walk, I tell him.

Well, you have a good day, now.

The same to you.

A mile or two later, an old black man comes rolling down the road on a golf cart, shouting pronouncements through a bullhorn. I later discover that he is the only black mayor in the county. He quiets down for a moment to greet me. Rolls on. A welcome introduction to geographical extremes, communities dotting the forest like dice flung and let be. Mississippi still the poorest state in the Union, although black people have owned land in this part of the state since the days immediately following the war’s end. No shotgun shacks here. Native sons and daughters live in six-bedroom trailer homes with working fireplaces and bubbling Jacuzzis.

Nothing like my aunt’s home in Fulton—Mississippi continually spoils my recollection of things—a range house with one door opening into her living room and out onto the front lawn, and a second door, a side exit-entrance, taking you through the kitchen to a cement overhang and cement patio paved all the way down to the noisy gravel driveway. She would dress in men’s overalls and rubber boots and go hunt for heavy watermelons—yellow meat inside—that grew wild behind her house in the wooded decline that everyone called “the snake pit.”

Sweat spills, a river inside me. My feet cramped, confined in shoes too stubborn to break. Murder, each step. Hot water rising in my chest, I draw in fire, expel ash. Drop down in roadside dirt. Shut my eyes and try to picture my aunt’s face.

That night, in my hotel room, I attempt to write her a letter. Words reverberate in the air like hummingbirds. I can see it all taking shape. (Sound the trumpets.) I lie back on the bed, hands cupped behind my neck, dirty shoes extended over mattress edge. I stare at the white ceiling until I can see through to the bone, down to the collagen, reflective substance that reveals.

At the complimentary breakfast buffet, I nurse a cup of gritty coffee and munch on wedges of cool watermelon while Dr. Hallard, between hearty crunches of toast and bacon and forkfuls of scrambled eggs, gives me the lowdown on a story he read in the morning paper. Tongue red with strawberry jam, he tells me about a black woman in some remote Florida town who draped her baby’s carriage in the Confederate flag, then camped out before the courthouse. Handcuffed, she is reported to have said, “It’s our history too.”

I leave the hotel to a cyclone of embraces. Promises to call or write. Visit. At the airport, I find a cool seat in a wedge of shadow and wait for the plane to begin boarding. Dressed in identical outfits (white blouse, red vest, and black skirt), three ticket agents—a white woman sandwiched between two black women—power walk down the long lobby, elbows working frantically like clipped bird wings, chattering through labored breaths. The woman closest to me carries a half-empty bottle of water that the three must be sharing.
All of us are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another.
They reach the lobby’s end, then circle back the way they came. Five minutes later, they reach the lobby’s end and circle back.

“They kept giving me a hard time. Then somehow it came out that I was a student at the university. You should have seen the looks on their faces. They had a truck bring it all the way from Memphis to Mississippi and everything. Even gave me a discount.”

“Wow.”

“People love that school down here.”

“The Harvard of the South.”

“I’d rather be at Harvard.”

“So, did they throw in a free wadermeln?”

“’Watermelon.’ I’m going to break you out of your country ways.”

“Who’s country? I’m not country. You country.”

“I’m not country.”

“You the one from Memphis.”

“Everybody from Memphis is not country.”

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

“Everybody down here doesn’t talk like you.”

“That’s my Mississippi roots.”

“Don’t blame it on Mississippi.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“So you should start—”

“I need to ask you a favor.”

“What?”

“A favor. That’s the main reason I called. Think you could drive over to Fulton and take a few photographs of my aunt’s house?”

“Fulton? I don’t know anything about Fulton.”

“Didn’t say you did. But it’s not that far from you. You must know somebody who knows.”

“Perhaps.”

“Come on.”

“How do you even know the house is still there?”

“It might not be.”

Several years ago, fish farmers brought Asian carp to the Mississippi River to harvest them after flooding had severely reduced the number of catfish and other local species. On their own these carp learned to defy their environment. They jump out of the water, three to four feet into the air, like dolphins and bang into the side of casino ships or fall onto the hook- and worm-crowded decks of low-sided boats. These carp weigh six pounds now but will weigh twenty pounds a year from now. Of course, there is no market for fish that fly.

Pennies rained from heaven in thick dirty color. Penny rain, ringing against parked cars, breaking windshields and windows, bouncing off concrete, rolling into sewers, spinning like plates. Sweat and work: Hatch played off-the-wall with a rubber ball against the ugly ribs of an old school building. In one motion, he caught the ball and shoved it deep into his pants pocket. He stood in the vacant lot and watched the world pass.

Open, coons chased pennies with brown grocery bags, coins cutting through. Coons abandoned their places in the lottery line and pulled at the sky with raised fists. Pennies spilled from windows and doorways. Coons fell from roofs with outstretched hands. Stud coons used they asshole for a purse, and bitch coons they pussy. Disbelief—awe—kept some rooted in shock. Not Boo. He plunged squarely into the business, clawing up coins like a bear fish.
Stupid coon
, Hatch thought. Never knew how stupid till now. Boo lived in a basement dark, damp, and smelly like a ship’s hold. Once a week Hatch boarded the ship—Ai, mate! Let’s take to the seas, he teased. Hol de win, hol de win, hol de win. Don’t let it blow—and tutored Boo in math and reading. Boo savored the sweetness of strength and gaffled his peers for their lunch money. Every day he ate two big-ass slices of white bread (Hatch liked wheat), two lumps of mayonnaise (Hatch liked Miracle Whip), and two long rolls of pennies. To curry favor and keep Boo from beating his ass, Hatch had taught him this penny sandwich. Save for the future, he said. You’ll always have something in your stomach.

Save. He bagged and transported groceries for Hi-Lo Foods. Seven, he earned a third of a man’s salary but could outthink anybody thirty times his size and thirty-three times his age.

Boo was at the other end of the vacant lot, open mouth aimed at the sky. He swallowed his fill of pennies, full to the stitches like the Pillsbury Doughboy, then headed home, slow and heavy. Vomiting pennies, shitting pennies, pissing copper.

Old ladies ran out the stained-glass doors of the Ambassadors for Church of God in Christ, the Elder Milton Oliver, pastor. (They sat on pews all day, hoping to levitate the building with their waving fans.)

If coons are this worked up, surely the white folks downtown must be really showing out. Hell, I ain’t gon chase no pennies. Be rich someday. His confidence was grounded in a structural vision. Heaven, Incorporated. Try Jesus—You’ll Like Him. Dial 1-800-OMYLORD and talk to Jesus directly. (Free blessing with every call!) Five hundred dollars will buy you a train ticket to heaven. One-time offer. Fifty dollars for your key to the kingdom (twenty-four-karet gold). One-hundred-dollar yearly membership for the Angel Club. (Purchase your wings first! Available in nylon, satin, and silk. White or off-white.) Twenty-five dollars to reserve your bed in the upper room. He would build big-ass churches the size of football stadiums, rising on every street, on every corner, in every neighborhood. Churches as big as cities rising above county, state, and country. Hell, I might even put some on the moon. Hire me the best preachers: Sterling Pickens of the First Baptist Multimedia Church, Rich “Ducats” Allen (Lay de foundation; build a home in dat rock; lift up this hammer; Gawd’ll put you to work), Stallion Blade (It ain’t bout the salary, it’s all bout reality). Five-dollar cover charge or ten-thousand-dollar yearly membership. Bucket-deep collection plates. Yes, I’m gon be all money someday. Head as flat as a dime. Diamond fingernails. Jeweled three-ton suit. Gold cane, fat like an elephant’s dick. Clockin dollars.

Knuckles, pennies punched through faces. Dragon’s teeth, chewed-up hands and feet. Sprayed brownstones clean. Leveled new houses and coppered old ones with squat layered covering like the shells of armored trucks.

In a burst of thunder (God’s fart), the sky closed.

The once hollow-cheeked were now frog-jawed with pennies. Green eyes were greener. Coons cradled coins in arms like children. (One bitch coon rocked her bundle back and forth.) The dark streets glowed copper paths. And under the streetlights, yellow blue red things, twitching or still. Some dressed, some naked. Some with calm faces, others with wide looks of terror.

Maybe the next time it will rain nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars, and round dollars. Maybe the sky will pave streets in silver. Level steel skyscrapers and mold them into tracks. Forge the entire city into a massive silver railroad. Guess who gon be the conductor? Choo choo! Whistling and weaving.

No sooner had he thought this, when it began to rain again.

He knew all the names for his people and recited them. Chocolate drops, coons, niggers, niggas, nigras, jungle bunnies, moolies, tar babies, sambos, spooks, spades, spear chuckers, darkies, geechies, coloreds, negroes, Negroes, blacks, Blacks, Afro-Americans, African Americans. Falling like bad dancers. Flopping like fish.

Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of two collections of poetry,
Stellar Places
(Moyer Bell, 2007) and
Harbors and Spirits
(Moyer Bell, 1999); the widely celebrated novels
Rails Under My Back
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000) and
Song of the Shank
(Graywolf Press, 2014). His awards include a Whiting Writers’ Award, a support grant from Creative Capital, and the Charles Angoff Award for fiction from the
Literary Review
. He has been a fellow at the Dorothy L. and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library