Love and Lament (23 page)

The first frost came early that year, the third day of October. The house was framed, with spaces for huge windows on all sides and even bigger windows in the ceiling. Cicero had decided, after consulting with all the carpenters he knew, as well as a professor of architecture at the university, to put in skylights instead of a glass roof, which, the professor said, would surely collapse without a steel frame. The work was held up by the unforeseen difficulty of maneuvering ladders and lumber and workmen around the precious banana plants, which had grown to more than six feet tall and
stood like a half dozen tightly wrapped pale green soldiers. There was great excitement about when they would begin to bud and leaf out, and Cicero was as worried as an expectant father, chewing through unlit cigars as he went from one worker to another trying to encourage him to work faster.

The largest pane was saved for last. It was to be fitted into the south-facing slope of the roof to catch the most light. Cicero had a scaffold erected around the structure for this delicate operation. The lumber for the scaffold and the greenhouse he had scavenged from his father’s property. Now to set the pane he and his six hired hands walked the glass up the side of the building, resting it on a cushion of blankets spread along the eave while three men went up top to receive it. Then all six men were on the roof, Cicero underneath to shout directions. He reflected that if the roof were to collapse, this would be the time, and he would be crushed beneath glass, under the weight of a crazy dream, and no one would speak of it without a shake of the head.

The window fit into its frame and held, and the men began nailing the top braces around it.

There had been two nights of mild frost, during which Able kept the new fireplace going, as well as a smudge pot inside—a cauldron of red-hot coals, ventilated out the unfinished roof. With the building glassed in, Cicero decided to dispense with the smudge pot and take his chances with the fireplace. For the first few weeks, he came out periodically in the night, checking the plants and the air temperature, inside and out, logging the numbers into a little ruled booklet. In the first week of December, the overnight temperature dipped below thirty; inside the glasshouse the air was barely above fifty. Cicero got the smudge pot going again, with Able and another man to tend it in four-hour shifts. They took to covering the roof with blankets at night, and taking them off during the day, and so kept the indoor temperature close to seventy.

By the middle of the month, all but one of the plants had turned brown. Cicero continued to water and fertilize them, but it became clear that they were dead. The final plant succumbed by the end of the year. It was the one closest to the outdoor fireplace, and Cicero lamented for the thousandth time that he had not built the greenhouse up against the main house. “I thought of doing it,” he said, “but all the pictures showed them standing alone. I should’ve known better—those were in subtropical regions.”

Mary Bet had been helping spell her father with his late-night outings, putting on her boots and coat and going out with a taper, and one of their barn dogs would come wagging up to accompany her. “It’s all right, Daddy,” she told him. “We can just move it in the spring, and you can get new plants.”

He shook his head. “The expense,” he said.

“We can cut back on sweets and silk and fancy things,” she told him, “and we can sell Charlie—we don’t need but one horse.”

“No, I’m going to let this experiment go.”

“How do you know it won’t work if you don’t try?” What she didn’t say was that she wanted more than anything for him to succeed in growing at least one bunch of bananas, so she could say to the gossips and naysayers, just one time—he did something nobody around here ever had the gumption to try.

Cicero nodded, as though it were the wisest advice he’d ever heard. “You’re right, baby girl,” he said. “One attempt can hardly be called a try.” So in May he sent off for another half dozen plants, and this time he got a head start on the greenhouse, taking it apart piece by piece and moving it to the south side of the house, where there was such good warm light it was a shame, he said, that they’d never taken advantage of it before. He found that by keeping a tighter account of their expenditures—in the same meticulous way he ran the store and observed the greenhouse—they didn’t need to sell the horse. He seemed to have forgotten about their plans to
visit the mountains, and Mary Bet felt no need to remind him, or to mention the new Singer sewing machine she’d had her eye on in the Sears catalog.

Three of the new plants developed brown spots before they were three feet high. They stopped growing and died, and Cicero sent off a letter to the United Fruit Company asking for free replacements. A polite reply explained that it was not uncommon for delicate plants under stressful conditions, or in imperfect climates, to develop a fungus that could lead to mortality. They could not be responsible for what happened to the plants after they had been shipped. Cicero shot off another letter, this one with an angry tone that he regretted as soon as he’d dropped it at the station office. How could they not be responsible, he asked, for plants that probably had a disease before they were sent, or could have developed on the train, which was about as stressful a condition as he could think of. He never got a response, nor did he get one from the next two letters he sent, each more outraged and pleading.

But the three healthy plants grew fast and strong, and even though Cicero had promised to give Able the fruit of one tree out of four he amended the promise to one out of three. During this time, Cicero ordered bananas from a fruit company in Raleigh, so that they all could get a foretaste of what they were working toward. The bunches were like hands, Mary Bet thought, with big fingers. For the next few days, when she was sewing, or cooking, or cleaning, or playing the piano, or praying, she thought about her hands. She thought of men building skyscrapers that were, so they said, ten stories tall, and she thought of Siler talking with his hands in sharp little bursts and beautiful sweeping gestures.

One cold night as she was drifting off to sleep under two wool blankets and a down comforter, just feeling her body begin to float into unconsciousness, she heard the door close and a voice rise up from outside. “He’s put a spell on those plants,” her father said. She
got up and went to the window and saw him down below, standing in his white nightgown, his feet bare, holding a lantern up to the greenhouse and staring in. “He’s spelling me, that black devil. I’ll spell him!”

She lifted the sash and called out, “Daddy, what are you doing?”

He looked up, holding the lantern as though to discern who was speaking. “Nothing,” he said, as brightly as a child caught in mischief, “just checking the plants. Go back to sleep.”

“Daddy, it’s freezing out. You oughten be outside without a coat. The plants are fine, Daddy. Please.” He looked at the greenhouse, as though staring at his reflection in the dark glass, then back up at his daughter. “I’ll come out and check on them,” she said.

“No, I’m coming in,” he replied. “They’re fine, I thought somebody might’ve—”

“What is it, Daddy?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head and went back around to the summer kitchen, where he let himself in, and then she could hear the back door opening and closing, and finally the footsteps on the stairs. She decided to stay put in her room. No need to embarrass him any more. She had a friend whose sister sleepwalked outside in her nightgown, carrying a chair so that she could have a tea party. Maybe that’s what Cicero had just done, though he’d never sleepwalked before that Mary Bet could remember, not even talked in his sleep.

Under her blankets and comforter again, she shivered and tucked her knees up. What would he do next? She stared into the black darkness to where her door was, and she got up and found her way there and pulled in the latchstring.

CHAPTER 14

1905

T
HE THREE BANANA
plants held through the winter and into the spring, and in the next summer they bore the first known crop of North Carolina bananas, seven arms of small but sweet yellow fruit. Cicero picked one of the two best trees for Able to harvest for his own use—Able sold half the fruit, at a dollar a bunch. They learned that the fruit which ripened on the tree was the sweetest, but would rot within a day or two. Cutting the bunches down when they were green gave them a few days to get the fruit to market before it began to turn the lemony yellow color that meant it was good to eat.

One of the trees began to develop the telltale brown spots of fungus. Cicero saw them one morning and felt as though a child had developed a rash; his chest tightened with dread. The long green fronds, never as big or healthy as those of the other two survivors, withered back, etiolated into little pale yellow wings, and died. The new clusters were stunted and Cicero let them ripen on
the tree. They turned an odd marbled yellow color, and when he peeled one he found almost no fruit inside—it was hard and pulpy, like wood, with long brownish-red veins. The taste was mealy, and he took his butcher knife and hacked off all the fruit of this tree and threw it to the pigs.

There were now two trees left, still producing good fruit when the first autumn chill set in, and one morning Cicero went out to the greenhouse to speak to Able. He was not sure how he should put what he had to say, because the terms of their deal had never been clear to begin with in his mind. And Able had taken such pride in owning the tree. What bothered Cicero slightly, though he never put it in words to anyone, was that Able never seemed apologetic at all about owning one of the two remaining trees. It was as if he thought he deserved to have it simply because he’d been lucky enough to have one that would outlast the others. When he entered the greenhouse, he found Able checking the plants’ progress.

“Stumps just keep puttin’ out new leaves,” Able said, “soon as the old ones die. I think these two is just the strongest of the lot. Like you and me.”

“Yes, well, Able,” Cicero said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Since Able only glanced up, a flash of white in a dark face behind the fronds, Cicero knew he would have to just go on and speak his mind. Was the air in the hothouse always so steamy, so wet you could hardly breathe, the windows so fogged you could see nothing of the outside but a gray blur? “You see, Able, I know how you love that tree, and I’ve let you harvest it as though it were your own. But now that we’re down to just two trees, I have another deal to propose that I’m sure you’ll think is fair.” He waited, but Able made no sound at all; he just kept studying the trees for dead leaves to prune.

“I’m proposing,” Cicero said, “to let you keep half the fruit of that tree. That’s more generous than I ought to be. It’s more than our original agreement. What do you say?”

Able, his eyes uplifted to the thin green hands growing just above his head, said, “It’s your tree, Mr. Cicero. You can do as you please.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say, Able. Just go on picking the fruit as you’ve been doing, but leave it for me to sort through. I’ll see you get your half.” He thought of saying something about how he’d make sure Able got plenty of good bunches, but he decided to leave it at that. As he was heading out, he heard Able clear his throat.

“This here’s a fine tree,” Able said. “You won’t be disappointed, nawsuh. I’ve kept it in tip-top shape.”

“I know you have, and I know you haven’t neglected the others at the expense of that one. And I’d ask you to consider what would happen if the other tree over there were to die?”

“I spec we’d have to share and share alike,” Able said.

“Yes, I’d find some equitable arrangement.” He made a jovial little laugh that sounded false to his own ears. “Able,” he said, “I hope you won’t think I’ve gone back on my word. I believe if you cogitate on it, you’ll come to the same conclusion I have.”

“Yessuh,” Able said, “I surely will cogitate.”

Cicero eyed the younger man—he had never known him to be surly or disrespectful; he wouldn’t stand for it from any employee. Able looked back briefly, nodded and smiled, then seeming to recognize what was being asked, said, “I’ve cogitated on it, Mr. Cicero. And I believes you’s right. This tree is a fine tree, but I am not its master. Nawsuh, not by a sight.”