Sweeping Up Glass (31 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

They’re moving toward the telephone booth now—French, the sheriff, a couple of others. They don’t look like killers, but now I know the color of their hearts.

Wing’s sweet voice comes on the line.

“It’s Olivia. I—”

“Olivia? Where are you?”

“Kingston. Wing?”

“I’m here.”

“I’ve always loved you,” I blurt. “Back then, being angry when your folks died, and when you married Grace, I was selfish and childish, but—”

“Olivia, honey—”

“Wing—” I pare the words from my throat. “Is Will’m with you?”

“He’s here.”

“Take care of him.”

I can hear Wing’s fear. I drop the phone. Before the door is closed, Longfeet has us moving. The Cott’ners bang on the side of the bus, then race for their cars.

“Help’s on the way,” I tell Longfeet. “But we have to go back.”

Two cars have come alongside, another behind. The Reverend turns from the window and shouts for everyone to get down. “There’s only God’s help for us now,” he says. “Longfeet, take us to the Methodist church.”

The bus pulls into traffic.

“No! You can’t jeopardize people who have nothing to do with this. Listen to me, I can prove the Cott’ners murdered those people—your brothers and sons. But we’ve got to go home!”

They look so tired.

I say, “Reverend Culpepper, God helps those who help themselves.”

He sighs and rubs at his face. “We’ll take a fair show of hands.”

“Way I see it,” Junk says, hunkering down with his arms around Love Alice, “I’d sooner meet Jesus on the road home as any other.”

Miz Hanley speaks up. “Ain’t no need to take count, Reverend. If Tate Harker says go home, we go home.”

Longfeet finds a wide place in the road and turns the bus around. It wheezes mightily, coughs, and dies. He grinds the gears and starts us up again. I hold on tight and watch the gravel and brush race by my window, duck my head when the cars begin to pass and pull ahead. Coming around a turn, I see that a black sedan barricades the road ahead.

“Hold on!” Longfeet says, and he stands on the gas pedal.

My last thought before we hit broadside is that I hope nobody was in that car. Junk and the Reverend catch me as I topple. With
a great screaming of metal and the stink of burnt rubber, we shove the car off to one side, and it disappears. In the mirror I catch Longfeet’s toothy grin. Behind me there’s sobbing and weeping as we barrel along toward Aurora. Any minute, we’ll be surrounded again. The bus rattles so hard, I fear for its parts. No one closes an eye, not even the children who are tucked into laps and under the seats. A great deal of crying has been replaced by prayers.

The only destination I can think that will hold us all is Wing’s hotel. On the other hand, Will’m is there, and I’d be bringing the Cott’ners right to his door.

W
e turn off the highway. This old tank won’t run on fumes. When it stops dead, the Cott’ners will appear out of nowhere, pry open the door, and swarm the bus. I figure they’ll beat us all senseless, then fling us through the ice on the Capulet. Then I see the last rise in the road before town.

Somewhere behind is Phelps’ righteous club—Judas Iscariots who admired sighted silver-faces and then shot for sport. Worse, they donned robes, tried men, and snapped necks. And Wing, in his innocence, has bedded them down. If we go to the hotel now, the Cott’ners will destroy the place, and all Wing’s work will have been for naught. What’s left of Grace Harris’s memory will be nothing more than a pile of kindling.

For now, the Cott’ners are keeping their distance.

“Take us to my place,” I tell Longfeet.

He pulls off onto Farm Road One.

“Turn up in the driveway, will you?” Then I tell him the rest of my plan.

Longfeet listens and nods.

The Cott’ners’ cars haven’t come into sight. Maybe they’re making telephone calls, finding guns, digging graves. Telling their wives they’ll be late getting home.

God,
where is our help?

The temperature must be rising because the snow has turned to a thick layer of slush. We pull up in our side yard, and Longfeet stops the bus by the outbuilding, the old toolshed where Pap once worked the still. I open the shed door. Longfeet and I move sacks of feed, a couple of barrels, a half dozen crates. Junk helps. He catches hold of the iron ring in the floor and raises the door. Below is the tunnel Pap once dug. Smells of mold, and decay, and rotting earth rush out.

Longfeet and the Reverend are helping folks off the bus and into the shed where they cry out and balk, and I run for the lantern on the porch. But when the back door opens and Will’m comes out holding the cub, I’m near tears, near the end. I have saved nothing.

Junk looks at the slush. “Tracks lead right to us.”

“I’ma close the door, cover it over,” Longfeet says. “Miss Livvy right. I gon’ pass by the barn, that old cabin, drive ’round and ’round. When I see ’em comin’, I lead ’em down the road. Maybe they follow me, maybe not. But you got to hurry.”

The Reverend holds his daughter in his arms as she pleads, “Longfeet, if they catch up with you—”

“Don’t you worry,” Longfeet tells his wife.

“All right, then,” Junk says. “Reverend, you take this lantern and lead the way down. Love Alice and I will come last with Miss Livvy.”

Where are the marshals?

One by one, the Reverend and his flock disappear into the hole. Across the yard, Junk and I drop into the muddy grave we began digging three days ago. Junk has the shovel. I scrabble with my hands. In a few more minutes it’ll be our turn to follow the
others through the trap door. I wonder, now, if Pap dug it not so much for convenience, but in case he needed to get away from Phelps.

Then Junk strikes something with his shovel. He gets down on his knees in the muck, works his hands. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard Junk swear. With a sucking sound, a tin box pulls loose, and he passes it to me.

Longfeet shouts, “You-all got to hurry! I got to move this bus!”

We scramble from the hole. I take Will’m’s hand. Through the winter trees to the west I see the highway. A long line of dark cars slow to make the turn.

Into the shed, then three steps, four, into the belly of the earth. Six, seven. My heart bangs in my throat, and I imagine I can’t breathe. Will’m is behind me. With the ninth step, I am standing on the plywood floor, but it’s soft and splintered, and water rises. The braces have rotted, and the walls are pure mud. There’s a great deal of moaning and some in front of us cry out. I try not to think about the soil overhead, how it crawls with vermin and seals us in. The Reverend once baptized me in the name of this earth. I’m counting on it to save us now.

Even in the muck I pass the word to sit down. If we don’t, many will soon faint, and we must not make a sound. Will’m and I sit, and Miss Wellette, next to me, folds herself into the slop. I know so many old feet and legs and knees are cramping, and I wonder how the children are so quiet. I send along word, too, that the other end is only plywood and if worse comes to worse they might push through into our cellar. What comes back along the line is not spoken. They’ll die here before they’ll hang in Phelps’ barn.

Junk and Love Alice scramble down the steps. Longfeet closes
the door and stacks things to cover our hiding place. We hear the bus rumble and fade away, locking us in with mildew and our prayers. Love Alice is in her husband’s arms.

There are murmurs and static bursts of sobbing, but then they are still. I can hear them breathing, and wonder how long it will be before the Reverend’s lantern goes out. I put my arm around Will’m, hold him tight.

Miss Wellette lays her hand on top of his head. A last blessing.

“We’ll be all right,” I say.

Truth is, we’ll run out of air and freeze. We’re in here for life, and probably for death. In this belly of the earth, I wish I could see Will’m’s gray eyes. I know he has tucked the cub under his shirt, against his heart.

“Gran? When the marshals come,” he says softly, “will they know we’re down here?”

I pull him into this coat that isn’t mine, and button it around us. The air is hot and syrupy. He tucks his head under my chin, and I close my eyes. I never could have asked for more. I’m going to heaven, rocking Will’m.

T
he first to arrive were Misters French and Andrews, and that fat-faced Doyle Pink, who once swore to defend and protect us. They were followed by a dozen or so more, and by the time they got organized and ripped up the trap door, Junk was ready. He launched himself at them. With his fists he bloodied the first four or five before they wrestled him to the ground.

Even as Will’m was losing consciousness, he now swears he could hear sirens out on the highway.

I have no idea how many deputies Marshal Quaid brought, but they drove into our yard and surrounded the Cott’ners who had dragged some of us, unconscious, from the hole. That was their mistake. They should have left us there.

Now Junk and I stand looking down at the hole near the outhouse, where I once thought we’d find what was left of Pap’s bones. Love Alice is beside me—flanked by three federal marshals in yellow rain gear, for it’s been pouring, but now the sun has come out.

“Let Marshal Quaid take you to the hospital, Junk,” I say.

“Hush, O-livvy,” Love Alice says, holding an umbrella.

Wing is here, too.

We go into the house. I lay the tin box on the table and lift the
latch. Inside is an oilcloth wrapping, and inside that are the two black binders I remember as Pap’s doctoring books. Marshal Quaid watches as I lift out the first one, open it, and turn the pages. In Pap’s webby script are dates and accounts of the hangings he witnessed. He wrote about the Phelps boys shooting Booger. The inductions that went on in the barn, the trials. The pages are filled, front and back—victims and judges, and who acted as jury. Name after name of the men who were involved, and, to my surprise, a few women, including Elizabeth Phelps. Sketches of coloreds with their necks in nooses, standing on their toes on tight bales, while hooded men kicked the cotton from under them. Here are maps of their graves in Phelps’ north acreage, the same field Sanderson Two protects from coyotes.

With an enormous sigh, I give the books up. Wing puts his arms around me. Quaid wraps the books gently in the oilcloth and lays them back in the box. He hoists it under one arm, and shakes my hand. Then he reaches down and shakes Junk’s, too.

Then, blessing of blessings, the marshal tips his hat to Love Alice.

She looks in his eyes and tells him he’s having too much pecan pie for supper. And
that
, she says, grinning, is one almighty truth.

A
lthough I’m exhausted, I can’t stop talking. I’ve told Wing about Alton and James Arnold Phelps, and about death dealt out by the Cotton Club. How they chose victims at random and did such a thorough job, locally, that there are no young colored men left in Aurora. Along with names I’ve given, Pap’s records are enough to convict more than a hundred men. I suspect that, by now, a lot of them are dried-up old codgers.

Wing says he wished he’d known. Just so he could save me. I love him for that and don’t mention the uselessness of such a thought. He had his hands full.

Quaid says his office has been investigating the cotton trials for a long time. Too bad, he adds, my pap didn’t know that.

So far they’ve found no trace of Elizabeth. Phelps probably drowned her in the Capulet where enough folks were baptized to sanctify her for eternity.

Will’m is happy he didn’t “miss all the important stuff.” I wish he had, and before long we’ll talk, he and I, about our time in that tunnel. I’m glad he saved the cub.

For hours, Wing listens. I don’t point out that Cott’ners bedded down in these very rooms. Wing’s eyes are already heavy with sorrow. As best I can, I replay the scenes with Alton and
Doyle Pink, the truth about Pap, the fire at the church. I tell him about the ride to the penitentiary. When I tell him about seeing Pap, Wing closes his eyes. I don’t know whether he’s picturing it all, or if the enormity of it is just too much. I talk on, coming to the part about phoning him. He says it was a gift.

“Feels like I owe somebody a nickel,” he says.

I reach for the brush that he’s using on my hair.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he says, pulling back. “All these years I wanted to take your hair down. Like that might shake loose all the hurt between us.”

I bite my lip. I’m right out of the tub with the gilded claw feet, the one next to the pull-chain toilet I demonstrated back when the hotel opened. I can’t think why Wing would want to change a thing. He turns me to him. We’re sitting on my bed in the velvet-draped room. He lifts my chin, puts his mouth on mine. We’ve crossed rivers of time, and our heat is so powerful I can’t breathe in the face of it.

No matter how hard we try, we can’t get close enough, but hold each other so tight, it’s a miracle one of us doesn’t break. Wing sheds his clothes and lays me back, settles himself, easy, on top. He kisses my neck, hides his face in my hair, and lifts my nightgown.

A vision of us, naked in the woods at fourteen, makes me smile. It’s been so long since I’ve felt his hands that I’m trembling like some heroine on the rack over at Dooby’s.

Funny how a body leans into this need. I part my legs and bend my knees. Lift myself to him.

“Oh God, Olivia. I love you, I love you.”

Afterward, I want only to lie between his legs, my head on his chest. Slide in and out of sleep. Sometime in the night, his hands caress me.

“Shh,” he says against my hair.

In the waxy moonlight I see the muscles in his shoulders, the pleasure on his face. Was there ever a night when we didn’t do this—work for breath, try new kisses, find places to touch. I shift slightly, inviting his body, his loving. Heat rises until I cry out for him to fill me again, but he lays a finger on my lips, and won’t hurry. I wonder if God is instructing him in that. In any case, Love Alice is right about the pecan pie.