Mudbound (15 page)

Ronsel’s body went very still, and his eyes locked with Orris’s. But then he dropped his gaze and said, “Sorry, suh. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Where do you think you’re going, boy?” said Doc Turpin.

“Just trying to get home to see my folks.”

The door opened again, and Henry and a few other men came inside, crowding behind Pappy, Orris and Doc Turpin. All of them wore unfriendly expressions. I felt a flicker of fear.

“Honey,” I called out to Henry, “this is Hap and Florence’s son Ronsel, just returned from overseas.”

“Well, that explains it then,” drawled Pappy.

“Explains what?” said Ronsel.

“Why you’re trying to leave by the front door. You must be confused as to your whereabouts.”

“I ain’t confused, suh.”

“Oh, I think you are, boy,” Pappy said. “I don’t know what they let you do over there, but you’re in Mississippi now. Niggers don’t use the front here.”

“Why don’t you go out the back where you belong,” said Orris.

“I think you’d better,” said Henry. “Go on now.”

It got very quiet. The air fairly crackled with hostility. I saw muscles tense and hands clench into fists. But if Ronsel was afraid, he didn’t show it. He looked slowly around the store, meeting the eyes of every man and woman there, mine included.
Just go
, I pleaded with him silently. He let the moment drag out, waiting until just before the breaking point to speak.

“You know, suh, you’re right,” he said to Pappy. “We didn’t go in the back over there, they put us right out in front. Right there on the front lines, face-to-face with the enemy. And that’s where we stayed, the whole time we were there. The Jerries killed some of us, but in the end we kicked the hell out of em. Yessuh, we sure did.”

With a nod to Rose, he turned and strode out the back door.

“Did you hear what he just said?” sputtered Pappy.

“Nigger like that ain’t gonna last long around here,” said Orris.

“Maybe we ought to teach him better manners,” said Doc Turpin.

Things might have turned ugly, but Henry stepped forward and faced them, hands up and palms out. “No need for that. I’ll have a word with his father.”

For a moment I was afraid they wouldn’t back down, but then Orris said, “See that you do, McAllan.”

The men dispersed, and the tension lifted. I did my shopping and rounded up the girls, and we left Tricklebank’s. On the way back to Mudbound, we came upon Ronsel walking down the middle of the road. He moved to one side to let us pass. As we went by him, I traded another glance with him through the open window of the car. His eyes were defiant, and they were shining.

RONSEL

H
OME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
, jiggety-jig. Coon, spade, darky, nigger. Went off to fight for my country and came back to find it hadn’t changed a bit. Black folks still riding in the back of the bus and coming in the back door, still picking the white folks’ cotton and begging the white folks’ pardon. Nevermind we’d answered their call and fought their war, to them we were still just niggers. And the black soldiers who’d died were just dead niggers.

Standing there in Tricklebank’s, I knew exactly how much hot water I was in but I still couldn’t shut my mouth long enough to keep myself from drowning. I was acting just like my buddy Jimmy back in our training days. I told him and told him he’d better humble down if he knew what was good for him, but Jimmy just shook his head and said he’d rather get beat up than act like a scared nigger. And he did get beat up, once in Louisiana and twice in Texas. The last time a bunch of local MPs roughed him up so bad he was in the infirmary for ten days, but Jimmy never did humble down. If we hadn’t shipped out I think they might’ve killed him. When I told him that he just laughed and said, “I’d have liked to seen em try.”

Jimmy would’ve been proud of me that day at Tricklebank’s, but my daddy would’ve blistered my ears. All he knew was the Delta. He’d never walked down the street with his head held high, much less had folks lined up on either side cheering him and throwing flowers at him. The battles he’d fought were the kind nobody cheers you for winning, against sore feet and aching bones, too little rain or too much, heat and cotton worms and buried rocks that could break the blade of a plow. Ain’t never a lull or a cease-fire. Win today, you got to get up tomorrow and fight the same battles all over again. Lose and you can lose everything. Only a fool fights a war with them kind of odds, or a man who ain’t got no other choice.

Daddy had aged a considerable bit in the two years since I’d last seen him. There was white in his hair and new worry lines around his eyes. He’d lost weight he didn’t need to lose too, Mama said that was since he broke his leg. But his voice was as strong and sure as ever. The day I got home I could hear it from way out in the yard, thanking God for the food they were about to eat and the sun He’d been sending lately to make the cotton grow, and for the health of all here present including the laying hens and the pregnant sow, and for watching over me wherever in creation I was. Which by that time was standing right in the doorway.

“Amen,” I said.

For a minute nobody moved, they all just set there gawping at me like they didn’t recognize me. “Well?” I said. “Ain’t nobody gone offer me some supper?”

“Ronsel!” yelled Ruel, with Marlon a half second behind him like always.

Then they were up and hugging me, and Mama and Lilly May were kissing my face and carrying on about how big and handsome I was and asking me how was my trip and when did I get back to the States and how come I hadn’t wrote to tell them I was on my way home. Finally Daddy hollered, “Quit fussing over him now and let him say hello to his father.”

He was setting there with his leg propped up on a stool. He held out his arms and I went and gave him a big hug, then knelt down by him so he wouldn’t have to look up at me.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “I prayed for it, and here you are.”

“And here you are with your leg in a cast. How’d you manage to do that?”

“It’s a long story. Why don’t you set down and eat and I’ll tell you all about it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. With my daddy, everything’s a long story. I heaped my plate. There was salt pork and beans and pickled okra, with Mama’s biscuits to sop up the juice.

“I used to daydream about these biscuits,” I said. “I’d be setting on top of my tank eating my C rations—”

“What’s a sea ration?” said Ruel.

“Is that some kind of fish?” said Marlon.

“
C
like the letter
C
, not like the ocean. It’s Army food. I brought some home so you could try them. They’re in my bag. Go on, you can look.”

The twins ran over to my duffel bag, opening it and pulling everything out onto the floor. Still a couple of kids, though they were near as tall as me. Made me a little sad to watch
them, so young and eager. I knew they wouldn’t stay that way much longer.

“Anyway,” I said to Mama, “I told all the guys about your biscuits. By the time the Jerries surrendered I had every man in the company dreaming of them, even the Yankee lieutenants.”

“I dreamed about you,” Mama said.

“What did you dream?”

She shook her head, running her hands up over her arms like she was cold.

“Tell me, Mama.”

“It don’t matter, none of it come true. You back with us now, safe and sound.”

“Back where you belong,” Daddy said.

A
FTER DINNER THE
two of us were having a jaw on the porch when we seen a truck coming down the road. It pulled up in our yard and Henry McAllan got out.

“Wonder what that man wants now?” said Daddy.

I got to my feet. “I reckon he wants to talk to me.”

“Why in the world would Henry McAllan want to talk to you?” said Daddy.

I didn’t answer. McAllan was already at the foot of the steps.

“Afternoon, Mist McAllan,” said Daddy.

“Afternoon, Hap.”

“Ronsel, this is our landlord. This here’s my son Ronsel that I been telling you bout.”

“We’ve met,” said McAllan.

Daddy turned to me, worried now.

“I better speak with you alone, Hap,” said McAllan.

“I ain’t a child, sir,” I said. “If you got something to say, you can say it to my face.”

“All right then. Let me ask you a question. You planning on staying here and helping your father?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’re not helping him, acting like you did earlier at Tricklebank’s. You’re just helping yourself to a heap of trouble, and your family too.”

“What’d you do?” asked Daddy.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just tried to walk out the door is all.”

“The front door,” McAllan said, “and when my father and some other men objected to it he made a fine speech. Put us all in our place, didn’t you?”

“Is that true?” said Daddy.

I nodded.

“Then I reckon you better apologize.”

McAllan waited, his pale eyes fixed on me. I didn’t have a choice and he knew it. He might as well to been God Almighty as far as we were concerned. I made myself say the words. “I’m sorry, Mr. McAllan.”

“My father will want to hear it too.”

“Ronsel will pay him a visit after church tomorrow,” said Daddy. “Won’t you, son?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“That’s fine then,” said McAllan. “Let me tell you something else, Ronsel. I don’t hold with everything my father says, but
he’s right about one thing. You’re back in Mississippi now, and you better start remembering it. I’m sure Hap would like to have you around here for a good long while.”

“Yessuh, I would,” said Daddy.

“Well then. Y’all enjoy your Saturday.”

As he turned to leave, I said, “One more thing, sir.”

“What?”

“We won’t be needing that mule of yours much longer.”

“How’s that?”

“I aim to buy us one of our own just as soon as I can find a good one.”

Daddy’s jaw dropped. I heard a little gasp from inside the house and knew Mama was listening too. I’d wanted to buy it first and surprise them with it, but I wanted to knock Henry McAllan down a peg even more.

“Mules cost a lot of money,” he said.

“I know what they cost.”

McAllan looked at my father. “All right, Hap, you let me know when he finds one. In the meantime I’ll rent you mine on a day-to-day basis. I’ll just put it on your account and we can settle after the harvest.”

“I’ll settle with you in cash soon as I get that mule,” I told him.

I could tell Henry McAllan didn’t like that, not one bit. His voice had a sharp edge to it when he answered. “Like I said, Hap, I’ll just put it on your account.”

Daddy laid a hand on my arm. “Yessuh, that’ll be fine,” he said.

McAllan got in his truck and started up the engine. As he
was about to pull away, he called out, “Don’t forget to stop by the house tomorrow, boy.”

I watched the truck disappear into the falling dusk. The whippoorwills had started their pleading and the lightning bugs were winking in and out over the purpling fields. The land looked soft and welcoming, but I knew what a lie that was.

“No point in fighting em,” said Daddy. “They just gone win every time.”

“I ain’t used to walking away from a fight. Not anymore.”

“You better get used to it, son. For all our sakes.”

W
E FOUGHT FOR
six months straight across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Germany and Austria. With the different infantry battalions we were attached to, we killed thousands of German soldiers. It wasn’t personal. The Jerries were the enemy, and while I tried to account for as many as I could, I didn’t hate them. Not till the twenty-ninth of April 1945. That was the day we got to Dachau.

We didn’t know what it was even, just that it was in our way. Nary one of us had ever heard of a concentration camp before. There’d been rumors floating around about Germans mistreating POWs, but we thought they were just tall tales meant to scare us into fighting harder.

By then I’d gotten my own tank command. Sam was my bow gunner. We were driving toward Munich a few miles ahead of the infantry when we caught the smell, a stink worse than anything
I’d ever smelled in my life, and by that time I’d smelled plenty of corpses. About a mile later we came to a compound fenced all around by a concrete wall, looked like a regular military post from the outside. There was a big iron gate set in the wall with German writing on the top. Then we seen the people lined up in front of the gate, naked people with sticks for arms and legs. SS soldiers were walking up and down the lines, shooting them with machine guns. They were falling in waves, falling down dead right in front of us. Sam took out the soldiers while Captain Scott’s tank busted down the gate.

Hundreds of people—if you can call skin scraped over a pile of bones a person—came staggering out of there. Their heads were shaved and they were filthy and covered with sores. Some of them ran off down the road but most of them were just walking around in a daze. Then they caught sight of this dead horse that’d been hit by a shell. It was like watching ants on a watermelon rind. They swarmed the carcass, ripping off pieces of it and eating them. It was horrible to see, horrible. I heard one of the guys retching behind me.

We followed the sound of gunshots to this big barnlike building. It was on fire and I could smell roasting flesh. We came around the corner and seen more SS soldiers shooting at people inside. The building was full of bodies stacked six foot high on top of one another, smoking and burning. Some of them were still alive and they were crawling over the dead ones, trying to get out. The SS soldiers were standing there just as calm as they could be, shooting anybody that moved.
We opened fire on those motherfuckers. Some of them ran and we got out of the tank and chased them down and shot them. I took out two myself, shooting them in the back as they were running away from me, and I felt nothing but glad.

I was walking back to my tank when a woman tottered over to me with her hands stretched out toward me. She had on a ragged striped shirt but she was naked from the waist down—that’s the only way I could tell she was a woman. Her eyes were sunk way back in the sockets and she had sores all over her legs. She looked like a walking corpse. I started backing away from her but I stepped in a hole and fell and then she was on me, clutching me, jabbering nonstop in whatever language she spoke. I was pushing her away, yelling at her to get the fuck off me, when all the strength seemed to go out of her and she went limp. I laid there underneath her and stared up at the sky—such a pale pretty blue, like nothing bad had ever happened under it or ever could happen. Her weight on me was light as a blanket, so light she was hardly there at all. But then I felt the warmth of her body through my uniform. I ain’t never been so ashamed of myself. It wasn’t her fault if she seemed less than human, it was the fault of them that did this to her, and them that didn’t raise a voice against it.